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Reviews
Dune: Part Two (2024)
It just didn't work for me
My apologies to all who were enthralled by Dune II. I respect your experience. Maybe if I'd have seen Dune I it would have helped but I don't think so. The jerry-rigging of several religions seemed pretentious and trite while the half-dozen plot threads unraveled regularly. Sweeping CIG backgrounds soon became tiresome. Trying to keep supporting characters straight was difficult. I tried but even at the end I was unsure of what had happened to relationships, especially to the women characters. Critics have outlined what it all was supposed to be about, but I found it a bit dull. Maybe I'll wait for Dune I on the streams. Apologies to all.
Target (1952)
Several ways very bad
The story involves a land grabber who is finally killed by a Deputy Sherif, Tim Holt. Holt is in charge of most everything in the story including the film itself. A deputy who simply needed Sherif.
But there WAS a Sherif! And because of name confusion,
the new Sherif is a WOMAN! Gasp. Regrettably, she is not included in any of the law enforcement actions. Sometimes she's present but that's it. She shows us she can shoot very accurately, but two male birds of passage do it all. It is the kind of omission that drives women today to anger, and rightfully so. Me too.
So was it possibly a bold effort to include a woman in a role given universally to a guy -- an early feminism? If that's the case, terrific, but it was handled in the most ignorant way possible.
So very poor film with embarrassing portrayal of women. Not worth watching.
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Where Stunt Doubles Dare
It's an average US good guys (and a few women) vs the bad guys (thousands, and one woman). The plot is intricate and interesting but takes far too long to roll out. The cable car scenes seem endless and could use much editing. The story doesn't quite wrap up the central fake General character, Mr. Jones, and it would have been so easy to do. It's left dangling from the cable car or castle wall or lucky airplane. Discussion on.how out-of-shape Richard Burton could do the physical tasks: Stunt doubles! Lots, for many actors in many scenes. And finally, that great device in all such adventures: The good guys and girl kill or destroy everyone and everything they shoot at. 100%. And the bad German guys couldn't hit the broad side of an Alp. Hundreds of Germans, tens of thousands of rounds, and only one hit hand on "our" side. Just like all those US indigenous people in the "westerns". Just like all those Japanese (or US guys in makeup) in WWII. The cliches are present throughout, these and more. But then it was 1968, when contrived wars were popular and our body counts were excellent.
Viva Zapata! (1952)
Not a good historical, biographical, or love-story film
Viva Zapata looks like it was edited with a chain saw. Scene sequences don't make sense; story shifts from sentimental military scenes to awkward empty love scenes; Zapata is amazingly not the focus and certainly not the interesting focus; Kazan breaks out the occasional Bergman imagery for no reason; the film drowns in 1950's cornball values and creaky pretentiousness; that Quinn wins Best Supporting Actor for a 1-dimensional early Zorba the Mexican (he was part Mexican!) again indicts the early 50's; and Brando's acting is actually turgid, made to burn sultry and do nothing far too often, and comprised by bad "character" makeup. I was surprised at how flawed this supposedly great film comes off.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes (2022)
Key questions raised but unanswered
The cinematography and sound score just didn't work for me. I know it did for others. So here are the spoilers.
1. The "documentary" claims to have found breathtaking new evidence about Marilyn's death, but in truth the Kennedy thread is 1960's news. I was struck by the four hours between 11 PM and 3 AM when the housekeeper was said to find her in bed. The revelation is that she was discovered by someone at 11 PM in comatose state, and someone called an ambulance. It took Marilyn to a hospital, but she died along the way. Then, in a stupefying revelation (if it's true), the ambulance turned around and took her body back to her house and (with whom?) placed Marilyn in her bed -- at 3:00 AM. The professional action would be to continue to the hospital, the emergency room, the coroner. But those four hours are left unexamined and empty. Who called the ambulance? Clearly not the housekeeper. Was there someone in the ambulance with "power" who said turn the ambulance around? How could this "breakthrough" mockumentary not have asked the questions?
2. For sixty years the most explosive story about Marilyn is that she was pregnant -- by Bobby or perhaps Jack. How could this or any tell-all film on Marilyn not have at least addressed the story, even if dismissed with "nonsense". But a pregnant Marilyn by Bob or Jack would be the initial Princess Di scandal whereby the mother-to-be would have to be made to go away, fast and in secret. That this elaborate effort doesn't even bring up the story of a pregnant Marilyn (who was clearly fertile) is highly, highly suspicious.
And friends, the role of the "researcher" is played by an actor. The "researcher" doesn't exist and is simply a device to hold together a puzzle with way too many pieces, especially the missing ones.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
A typical and often fatal mistake
The story of Macbeth is overall a very grim one. Many productions make the mistake of starting with excessive grimness and then for 2-3 hours getting grimmer and grimmer. The grimness usually centers on, of course, Mr. And Mrs. Macbeth. The tone of both characters in the D Washington version is as grim as I've seen. Add to this the incessant, ear-banging score that insists on interpreting every moment for us; a color palate ranging from heath gray to sad castle gray to battleship gray; and a Mrs. M who says "unsex me here" when it looks like that's already been done. Most all versions cut the script from 20 - 40%, which is necessary. But Denzel retains no moments of light reflection which are indeed there in the early scenes. As a result, Mr. And Mrs. M have no place to go. Emotionally or intellectually. They are grim from the start, only getting grimmer and grimmer. They don't change, in a medium of storytelling in which change is the central dynamic. They discover nothing about their situation except that it's. . .grim. They discover nothing new about each other and very little about themselves. Truly disappointed. Director/Overwriter Coen needs to rethink the world he creates in films to make them at least interesting, with characters who learn, discover, see clearly, and change.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
US Govt / Pentagon Propaganda
The Russian Roulette charade gives us a big hint as to why Michael Cimino would con United Artists into giving him For Knox to produce Heaven's Gate -- his final catastrophe. He lies, mainly to himself, about who he is and what he's doing. The roulette scene is the most intense in the film for most people, and it is a fraud, a lie, and a flagrant. Total invention of history -- a history we will have to continue to revisit because of films like this. Remember, Cimino said he was in the Vietnam catastrophe. There was only one people truly suffering in this Govt/Corporate war for profit and rank advancement -- the Vietnamese. Three million of them died, countless more suffered horrific injuries, and the country to this very day continues to repair the countryside and land that US munitions made in some areas unlivable for decades. I tip my hat to US veterans, among whom Cimino was NOT one, though he claimed to be. A liar for life. Real Vietnam vets got horribly used in a policy that was doomed from the February 1965 beginning, from the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and from the US turning down Ho Chi Minh's appeal for peace directly after WWII. Because Johnson and Nixon were bigger liars by far than Cimino.
The Flemish Bandits (2018)
Edited by a Chainsaw -- or written by one
Can't continue watching. Enormous gaps in the story, almost as if episodes were left out. The film has an excellent opportunity to reveal insight on class struggle -- rotting aristocracy vs. crude and arrogant rising bourgeoisie, same bourgeoisie making plans to rule through slavery and unrestrained violence, rural proletarians fighting in Robin-Hood style to . . . who knows. So in love with the violent and grotesque it has images that seem composed by the very corrupt bourgeoisie who watch it all. Even reviewers mistake the mud-and-blood "reality" with being impressive representation of "medieval" times -- although the time is 250 years past medieval. If a viewer has a tolerance for what we saw as shoddy story telling and over-gritty settings, maybe there's something here. We couldn't find it.
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
Sixty years make a difference.
In these days of Black Lives Matter, I have to applaud the usually tin-eared writers and producers who put together a film about the Dog Soldiers of post-civil war legend. The film does have many clunky parts but this is due to Ford's directing with a nail gun instead of a paint brush. The regrettable part of the film is to invent a situation where "free" black soldiers must identify indigenous people, here the dangerous "Apaches!" as part of their array of enemies. It probably happened at some point that "free" black soldiers and the encroaching colonization of native people came into conflict, but it's not something to spice up a plot -- at least certainly not now. One of the things I like very much about US films is they leave such a trail of the oppressive reality in which rich white corporate men forced and still force so many to live. Points the way for radical change today.
Living Space (2018)
Poorest kind of film making
The entire production process is a hoax. Steven Spiel? Really? Bio smells fake. From Australia? German sited film made "entirely in Australia." Argh. Do any research beyond "gore", Steven? Exec/ Producer credits are laughable. Idea is terrible and cliche'd beyond words. The nazis, or that they are nazis, has nothing to do with the story. Could be Repubs in Alabama or Dems in Southern Cal. The writing is derivative of every zombie movie ever made. Georgia Chara tries to do something with this tripe, but sows ears can't be made into even plastic coin purse. Can't bring a dead script to life, Gabrielle. Sorry. (Careful of slack jaw acting.) It's awful. Don't waste the breath, energy, or time.
Messiah (2020)
This is not a religious film
This is a film about politics, which means simply power. It is also a film about spirituality, which is a special kind of power. The reviewers seem not to realize that the film blends a half-dozen political/spiritual histories -- Moses, Jacob, Jesus, John the Baptist, Budda, Durgah on the tiger. They also seem not to know much of the Israeli - Palestinian struggle, which this film bravely and rightly describes with fully sympathy for the Palestinian people. There are complexities and contradictions, of course, but the initial march to the Israeli border fence during an epic dust storm is a reiteration of Moses parting the Red Sea and defeating Pharaoh. The relentless interrogation is at least Jesus before the pharisees and Pilot. And who could miss the classic Buddha pose? Implying several supreme spirits is the great achievement of Hindu religions and of indigenous people the world over. The people who put this together are smarter than most film makers and 3-4 steps ahead, always. Be sure to see this remarkable film series!
Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
A Screenwriter Spider Got Drunk
This is an entirely worthless film with more flaws, red herrings, and film gobble-de-gook than any "7" rated film imaginable. My image is that the screen writer / director, Mr. Drew Goddard, got drunk, became a spider (consistent with the film he was about to make), and spun about a half dozen plots -- one in the corner, one on a window sill, one outside, etc. Being still drunk, he hauled them in a grotesque empty hallway and spun them all together.
I appreciate very much the actors trying to make something of this. They all tried very hard and were entirely professional in the attempts. But they were all trapped in webs that made little to no sense.
1. Who are the "owners" or the outside FBI group or whatever? Leaving this completely unaddressed and finally abandoned is irresponsible, especially if the response is, "didn't you figure that out" or "ooo, that's the mystery, isn't it."
2. Just FYI, check all the "goofs" listed. Embarassing.
3. Gratuitous use of the Vietnam War and a mini Gone-with-the-wind array of bodies is unpardonable, especially when it concludes with the mouse character sinking to his knees to beat the catholic penance theme to death.
4. The male misogyny throughout is unbearable, and the entrance of Billy Lee with his abs to his hips as objectionable with gratuitous violence as his fake 60's Charles Manson knock off cum Once Upon a Time . . in the woods messiah trash.
5. The layering of time a la Pulp Fiction serves only to lose us in a story about a robbery we just don't care about -- esp with the low-rent Point Break masks.
6. What is this wretched motel / hotel? anyway Because we never find out "the owners" we can't really know. But really. Did any of he patrons have a reservation? Can anyone just walk in and stay in this Woolworths Chainsaw Hotel?
7. How does a 70-year-old Jeff Bridges priest suddenly become super geezer and take out the bad guys -- for a looooooooong time as Darlene and Miles reverie the past for at least 3 undisturbed minutes. Well, one way is to get that gray-wigged stunt guy in there quickly.
8. And be sure that the fire that is raging has no smoke whatsoever because, you know, this is an unusual hotel.
9. Returning to the misogyny, how does Emily get Rose away from the evil Billy Lee and drag her tied and gagged into this particular unusual hotel? Even more, how does Billy Ray get to the door where Priest and Darlene are just making their escape (and ending the film a half hour early -- please, please). How does that pivotal coincidence happen? Perfect timing. Almost like the script writer / director knew it was going to happen.
10. But since the script writer cut his teeth on a long series of "Buffy" movies and clips, we should not expect reasonable actions. Ever again.
11. So, all those who have rated this at 7 or above, please reflect, then go back and lower those ratings a lot. The only reason for this high a rating of such a mess of a film is that the cast and crew and all their friends logged in their 10's. Which makes as much sense as the plot of the film.
The Lady Eve (1941)
Too Much of a Stretch
Comedies, especially screwball comedies, need to stretch the world of possible. This one stretches too much and I eventually disconnected. First, the endless series of dumping gags seemed to take the world from screwball to crude farce. Second, Charlie's gullibility is a stretch to begin with but stays in the world of the probable impossible (probable in the world of this story). But from "Eve the English" on, Charlie's inability to understand what is over-obvious to the entire audience fell into the improbable possible, made me think about the contradiction, and diminished my sympathy for him. Nor was it clear to me when Eve fell back in love with Charlie, so that (given I was expecting a two hour film) I thought it was likely the film would deal with either her conning him yet again, or at least his discovery that both were "the same girl." So, all in all, I couldn't stay in it because, almost start to finish, it was too much of a stretch.
Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019)
Much Politics in the Shredder
I knew little about the film and was honestly a little disappointed, and a little angry by the end. I did my first play in middle school in 1960, went into college theatre teaching, especially theatre and social justice, and have never been fond of theatre/film being about itself. So many films in the 30's about "the theatah", as if that's the only thing writers and directors understood. Which is probably right. I'm still unhappy with Chorus Line. But this one. If we're looking for new directions from the 1960's, Quentin, how about going to the six months from September 1964 to February 1965 and stop that friggin' war? That truly mattered and we're still suffering from it. Indeed, if you're going to make a film about "the end of the great era of films" (Quentin's determination, of course), why not make it about "the beginning of a great era of film" and black people finally getting some screen time in the early 70's -- Shaft, Super Fly, Lady Sings the Blues. And flashback to the magnificent Raisin in the Sun in 1961. Could Quentin's memory film have been any whiter? I'm very white but have earned black blood in my veins. So, too much white privileged navel gazing for me. Others may have a different experience. Which is probably the case.
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)
Reflect on colonialism
I am happy the woman pursued a personal project of "helping" all those poor Chinese people. But that is a tidal theme of western colonialism from Columbus on. Images of her being the central person to herd Chinese children, even when other adults are around, reinforces England's predatory mythology that white Christian culture has a mission to save the godless, pagan world that is not England. The 1950's puked out this kind of cinema by the dozens. Westerners might well reflect on cheerleading for this kind of cultural poison.
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
A War Crime Against Indigenous People
Most of the reviews at least acknowledge that this testoster-wrong self indulgence is historically a catastrophe. Not enough attention is paid to the way in which such films perpetuated the fascist US myths about indigenous people's struggles against imperial invaders and the myopic heroism of a phalanx of Custers, all forged in the lie factories of 1930's films. "But they knew so little about. . . !" No kidding.
Dunkirk (2017)
It should be called Dumb Kirk, but worse, it's an example of fascist film making.
This film is fascist because it is frame by frame intentionally coercive so as to deprive an audience of any sense of (1) reflection, and (2) personal power. We are taken though a soundscape of piercing, relentless psychological violence (hey, it's a war film!) with a "story telling" structure that creates hopeless, trapped characters every minute (hey, it's a war film!) in such aggressive editing that we, the audience, are dragged through at least thirty horrific keyholes and back again in the course of the "story". It's not a story. It's six, eight, twenty? stories, again edited so as to thoroughly disorient the audience and hammer us with one water boarding (often literally) after another. (hey, its a war film!) It's fascist because fascism breeds on violence, especially senseless violence and the emptying of personal and collective power violence brings. I forced myself to disconnect from the torture and was able to get both a perspective and angry.
Worse, the film wholly ignores the historical reality of the bone-headed military decisions by the French (the criminally absurd Maginot Line) and the British (war had been declared MONTHS ago) (and Hitler was the opposition). The film also sucks dry the already-desiccated hero narrative forced on US population these last twenty years. With writhing violins after an hour and a half of uninterrupted electronic chainsaw sound score, I almost threw up.
What I'd like to be sure of is that this Dumb Kirk crime somehow stops Britain but especially the US from continuing the endless wars in the middle east and Africa, where the war dead are beginning to creep up to that sacred WWII yard stick. Somehow I don't think it will. Because fascism wants to give us a world that is dominated by men and violence in which there is nothing to be done. Just like in Waiting for Godot.
The film would have been helped enormously by the presence of even one woman (not used for sex appeal), but preferably by thousands -- to counter the narrative of the coming world police state orchestrated by the global corporate state in which patriarchal, fascist principles rely on everyone staying at home, feeling scared, being compliant, and asking no questions whatsoever.
By the way, the stupefying dedication is (paraphrase) to all those who were affected by what happened at Dunkirk. So in a loose application, that's maybe all of the World War II population. But if it's trying to be specific, babies born around the time of Dunkirk are now 76 - 77 years old, and the armies of working class soldiers who were victimized by their Dumb Kirk militaries are approaching 100. I'm sure those in particular appreciated this coercive homage to mindless directorial self-indulgence.
How the West Was Won (1962)
A suggested alternative title
What is wonderful about the cinema is that it leaves a trail of US fascist mythology for all to see. I remember when this came out, I was 16 and the smoke put up the national intestines was everywhere. Like all of its western ilk, it took the criminal policy of taking indigenous land through lies, deception, and violence and turned it into Greek mythology -- with none of the poetry or depth. This film truly should have been titled, "How to Put Lipstick on the Pig of US Imperial Genocide."
Lord of the Flies (1963)
This review counters the generally-accepted view that Golding and Brook produced some powerful insightful creative vision with Lord of the Rings.
Fifty some years later, this Golding film is a reminder of the bankruptcy of England's understanding of itself. As one of the 3-4 greatest colonial countries of post-Middle Ages Europe, we would think the genocidal policies of Europe in various "new worlds" would have caused educated, intelligent people to ask questions about that history. Here we have an England that slaughtered and conquered and enslaved Africans and inflicted incalculable damage on Caribbeans, North American indigenous, Australian indigenous, and Asian cultures. But in this film book of 1954 and film of 1963, neither Golding nor Brook can see the way clear to including a single child of color. Why? Because apparently the issue of genocide and centuries of terror is a matter for white folk to decide.
The Golding story is a British bourgeois wet dream of the failure to "civilize" the savage world, enacted of course by all white historical actors.
To be precise here, Golding imagines here and in other works that there lurks in the uncivilized a murderous savagery that can only be corralled by western civilization. Regrettably, western civ has been too weak, too uncertain, and too incompetent to truly finish the world-caging task.
Had Golding, and Brook, read something besides British self-congratulatory histories and seen something besides white "civilizing" westerns, they might have noticed that the true savagery of the last 600 years, or even last 2500 if we want to be a little comprehensive, originated in Europe. Always. And then Europe proceeded to genocide the world, only to find in 1930 the chickens had come home to roost. That the evil inherent in European supremacist values and social structures had faced off in Europe's very viscera. It refined its millennia of fascist practice and proceeded to genocide itself.
That history, that euro-characteristic of supremacy -- supremacy of religion, of color, of culture, of gender, of values -- was the cause of it's even as yet unrestored, unreparationed evil. The very conception of The Lord of the Flies is a confident moralizing that at least a couple of white euro-men know the secret of evil. When, at least in 1954 and 1963, they hadn't the vaguest clue about their origins, but were in fact, stranded boys wandering in the arts, perpetuating the mythologies that wove back at least to "renaissance" Europe, or to fascist Rome, or to hypocritically un-"democratic" Greece, and indeed to the whole notion of "civilization" itself.
It would have been instructive if Goldling and Brook had at some time tried to research the deep history of human tribes, how we lived for 40,000 years before the urbanization, which we call civilization, began. It was certainly the rulers and thinkers and "artists" and armies of "civilization" that destroyed tribes where ever they went. Perhaps, had they listened, they might have learned something about what it means to be a be a human being on this planet.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
The MIckey Rooney caricature, going on sixty years ago
Watching this, at best, "mixed achievement" film, nearly sixty years later, shows us regrettably what Hollywood thought was comic about stereotypes in the very midst of African-Americans' struggle for civil rights. Mickey Rooney's god-awful caricature of a Japanese landlord must have made the Klan crow. The tastelessness of a multi-decade "legend"'s racist stereotype, matched by it's wholesale lack of any comedy or humor, maps out the difficult roads ahead for all ethnically-marginalized people in the still-undemocratic dis-United States. Watching now, I alternate between deep embarrassment and deep rage. Had the rest of the film been redeemed by anything compelling in the story, maybe there'd be a saving element. But it's an empty and vicious male fantasy wrenched from a promising Capote text.
The Infiltrator (2016)
A credible film but not great
Cranston is very good because he is a hard working actor who brings the appearance of the spontaneous to what are in fact very good moment-by-moment choices. He has worked on the film before filming -- to me that's evident.
But the film -- for all its true story and round-peg-in-square-hole plot -- tends too much to the standard. Of particular concern are a number of short scenes, edited so as to leave the audience dangling. "What just happened?" could be the call. The "old aunt's story" is particularly odd.
I very much appreciated the possible infidelity not happening. In fact, Cranston and his wife are given a complex relationship that becomes even more complex. However, her "this is my choice" was sufficiently ambiguous that even the last scene between the two was vague and relied on my saying "oh, this is what must have happened."
Go, but if you get your expectations down, you'll have a better time.
Flight of the Lost Balloon (1961)
Racist Tripe
While I agree with those reviews that found nothing redeeming in The Journey of the Lost Balloon, and am bemused by those that tried to find pieces of cheap quartz in the rough, the film was deeply offensive as it played on the long US history of pervasive, oppressive racism. That the balloon comes down in a jungle and a shoreline where black tribal people live merely sets up the writer and director to show people of color as ludicrous, repugnant, vicious, utterly brainless sub-humans. The clichés are unbearable to watch, including the cliché of the euro-guy outrunning the natives (ha!) and hiding in foliage that the dozen or so indigenous people (otherwise to be assumed as masters of their environment) entirely miss, and then, like dogs, run together after a stick the euro-guy throws to create a diversion. Add to this yet another white guy playing an East Indian named "Hindu" with brown-face on all but the back of his white neck, and we literally have a documentary of racist ideology paraded in minute detail over the course an entire film. Of course we don't want to make such films illegal, but we do want to create a culture where such films are not even imagined.
To the brown shirts who will counter that these were simply conventions of an earlier and more innocent time, we can only say that this tripe is the cultural flag that flies over such conventions as slave trade, slavery, the Klan, segregation, ghettoization, and mass incarceration. Of which, in addition to this film, the brown shirts are very proud.