MOVIES

Family Movie Night has not seen any huge successes of late, with all the selections being flawed to some strange degree, but a few have provided some satisfaction.


The Cobweb (1955) is an incoherent Mental Clinic soap opera in which the staff seem more neurotic and hysterical than the patients.  Richard Widmark, Charles Boyer and Gloria Grahame were miscast, and the best performance was Lillian Gish as a stiff and angry little administrator.  The script was a muddle and characters' motivations were not clearly defined.  I would not have sat through it on my own, but Donna found it more tolerable.  I would give it 4/10.

Tomorrow's Children (1934) is a roadshow exploitation/educational film on the topic of eugenics and compulsory sterilization.  Not by nature a very good movie, it still has some good entertainment value in characterization and story line, and it becomes a nailbiter before it is over.  Lanky redhead Sterling Holloway provides some peculiar comedy relief. 6/10


The Blonde Captive (1931) Is an anthropological exploitation film made and narrated by Lowell Thomas using footage from his expedition through the South Pacific and around the northern coast of Australia.  It is fascinating to see this footage of the indigenous Australians apparently untouched by technological societies.  The real anthropological interest here is more in the viewpoint of the filmmakers, as the ostensible purpose of the expedition is the search for evidence of the survival of traits of  Neanderthal Man in the modern age, and Neanderthal Man is rung in at every opportunity until they find a fat happy Australian who shows enough visual similarity to a sculpture in the museum that they can claim their thesis is proven.  This film was also a good opportunity for the average guy to see lots of women with no shirts on and call it education, and the narration's blatant racism and sexism were perfectly acceptable humor at the time.  6/10

Once a Sinner (1950) is a British melodramatic thriller centering on class conflict.  The plot element of marrying above/below one's station is more a 1930s thing in US films but it's still obviously an important issue in 1950 Britain.  Fairly entertaining and overall a pretty good movie, but not great.   6/10

Movies

Catch Us If You Can (a.k.a. Having a Wild Weekend) - 1965  You'd think the "Dave Clark 5 Movie" would have something to do with the Dave Clark 5, but it doesn't.  This movie brought pleasurable expectations and left only boredom, regret, and a feeling of having been educated rather than entertained.  The one good thing about it for me was that they go to a place that allegedly has go-karts but they don't ride in them, or even show them onscreen.  That was a real relief to me because no matter what song they play in the background a go-kart scene is a go-kart scene and it contributes nothing to the story.  If you like wondering if anything interesting will ever happen, or seeing a movie supposedly about a band in which the band never performs or is even shown with or near their musical instruments, this is for you.  Not me.  2/10 for sociocultural education value, getting to see the Roman baths at Bath, and a lesson learned.

Movies

The British director Muriel Box recently came to my attention via her film Simon and Laura (1955), a light drama/heavy comedy about a theatrical couple forced to conceal their failure in marriage when they take the only work they can get - playing themselves on a daily television show. I was more interested in the BBC studio scenes than the story or characters, as they are the sort of charmingly hateful people I prefer to see cruelly skewered and brought low, (like Alan Bates in Butley), not glamourized and reconciled as it appeared was happening here, so I quit about halfway through. The production itself had many superior qualities so when I had a chance to see Box's 1957 The Passionate Stranger, a.k.a. Novel Affair, I made it a Family Movie Night feature. It is the story of a writer (Margaret Leighton) who uses the people around her as inspiration for her newest novel, with alarming consequences when her Italian chauffeur reads the manuscript and takes it rather too seriously. It's not a great movie - Donna and I both felt it lost a lot of pep midway and wound down a bit uneventfully, but it was a really good try which had a number of interesting features. I was especially impressed with the "gimmick" of the film, with the "reality" framing sequence being in monochrome and the extended fantasy, when the chauffeur is reading the manuscript, filmed in color. The entire fantasy sequence, which comprises half the film, was laughably melodramatic and intentionally so, aided to a great degree by the excessive gowns by Norman Hartnell with improbably vast stiff shawl collars and iconically '50s bell-shaped skirts and floral prints. Also deserving of recognition was the performance of Patricia Dainton as the maid; in the fantasy harsh, sharp-edged and painted; in the reality sweet, fragile and delicately appealing, by far the most sympathetic character in the film. This seems to me to point up the slightly unbalanced feel of the story. I also felt that in the end certain sequences needed for dramatic balance never materialized or took place off-camera. For overall quality I rate The Passionate Stranger 7/10, good but not great, and am looking out for more of Muriel Box. I thank you.

Movies

Tamara Drewe (2010) Superior dramedy showing the complex interactions of a diverse group of well-realized characters. I don't recall seeing reviews for a U.S. release, maybe because it would have little appeal to the car chase, shootout and explosion demographic. I picked it for Family Movie Night specifically because I saw stills of people sitting around a laden table, talking - it's one of those, but never bogs down with prolonged scenes of someone walking and thinking, or sitting and thinking, the way they sometimes do. I attribute its superiority to the fact that the source material and screenplay were both written by women, who probably never once felt the urge to make it more exciting by having someone point a pistol at another person. Lots of good intelligent laughs and believable circumstances. It's also nice to see email and cellphones as plot devices occasionally, mired as I often am in the archaic and fantastic. Well worth seeking out. 9/10

The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) This is part of my continuing program of seeing movies based on popular radio shows, or upon which radio shows were based. I don't expect them to be very good, and they rarely are. Tom Conway is The Falcon, and supporting characters include Harriet Hilliard, Cliff Edwards, and Edgar Kennedy. There are a number of rationing-related gags - all you had to do was say rubber or meat and it was a joke. 4/10

Family Movie Night

After many trials and tribulations with a digital file we ended up watching a dollar DVD off the bookshelf. Lovers and Liars (1979) was directed by Mario Monicelli, and stars Goldie Hawn and Giancarlo Giannini. It seems completely trivial at first, and doesn't follow common story conventions of presenting a problem and following through to a solution - instead it is a eurostyle character study of two completely opposite people thrown together by whim and trying to find common ground. She's a stereotypically American '70s open and honest free spirit, he's an old fashioned Italian lustful louse who'd rather concoct an atrocious deception than come out with the simple truth about anything. It's loaded with local color and cultural detail, being shot mostly on location in distinctively Italian locales, but not that kind of "golden sunset in Tuscany" lyrical crap. Maybe I am nuts but I found it to be significantly better and more sophisticated in concept and execution than most movies I have ever seen, and I think it should be more widely known. 8/10

Family Movie Night

Last Saturday we watched Shutter Island (2010) and I was impressed again, this time by how different it all seems the second time. As sometimes happens with "Ken movies," Donna didn't seem to be enjoying it at all for the first half, but it finally got to her by the end. Last night it was time to watch Becky Sharp (1935), based on a play which edits Vanity Fair down to about a dozen of its best scenes. When I read the book I found that all the sections dealing with the ostensible protagonist were a sort of payment for getting to read the parts about the fascinating monster of avarice and self-interest Becky Sharp, and this just deletes all the payment and gives nothing but the reward. This was the first full-length Technicolor film and it is sometimes used to striking effect. Much as I like Miriam Hopkins, I felt she overacted horrifically throughout the film, flinging herself around dramatically in a continuous state of ecstasy or despair, sincere or feigned. I prefer her under more restraint, and somewhat older. Nigel Bruce was ridiculously Nigel-Bruceian and the best part of the experience for me. It's not entirely a good movie, but I consider it an important one and worth seeing once or twice - this was twice for me. I rate it 7/10

Movies

Cry Tough (1959) John Saxon is a first-generation Puerto Rican American faced with the choice between drudgery and crime. A very nice New York independent production with many familiar faces from movies and TV, and a fine performance by Joseph Calleia as the father. 7/10

Flying High (1931) Formulaic aviation comedy of interest to me primarily for the Busby Berkeley dance numbers, but this is the first time I have seen Bert Lahr in something other than a lion costume. Charlotte Greenwood is his comedy mate, and Pat O'Brien takes the leading man role. Fills the time adequately. 5/10

La Nave de los Monstruos (1960) This Mexican singing-cowboy vs. space-monster movie was my choice for a completely ridiculous Family Movie Night. Women from Venus are wandering the galaxy in search of men, but until they arrive at last on Earth they find nothing but crazy looking monsters which they keep frozen in blocks of ice. The most appealing feature of this film for me is the spectacular Lorena Velasquez, also seen in Planet of the Amazon Women. Silly robot, crazy rocket set, nice space model shots probably lifted from another film, goofy monster suits, and of course a singing cowboy still can't overcome its basically soporific nature but it was fun anyway. 7/10

Lorena Velasquez: Beautiful but deadly

Freejack (1992) A chase movie in which Emilio Estevez is snatched from a fatal car crash into the dystopian future of 2009 for a rich man's mind transplant. Lots of running, shooting, driving, crashing, getting chased by non-actor Mick Jagger, and things blowing up; but the numerous huge bloblike cars of the future were great. Also great is any opportunity to enjoy charming Amanda Plummer, here endearing as a shotgun-wielding crotch-kicking nun. It's all kind of stupid but mostly fun. 6/10

What we will drive in 2009

Movies

Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) Probably as good a movie as you could make of this in 1935, with Claude Rains hamming it up a bit as the villain, and a mostly unfamiliar cast otherwise. If you just want a quick rendition of the story to give you an idea of what it is about, this will do. My choice for Family Movie Night, it left us unmoved. 4/10

A couple of nights ago we watched Trouble In Paradise (1932), an okay Ernst Lubitsch drawing-room comedy. When I got it from the library last year nobody was interested, but if someone else recommends a thing then it becomes a must-see. Has some funny bits, but I don't care for Kay Francis or Herbert Marshall. 5/10

On my own I watched How to Date an Otaku Girl (2009) also known as Fujoshi kanojo and My Geeky Girlfriend. Kind of the flip side of the smash hit Train Man, this time it is the girl who is obsessed with comics, animation and boy-love fantasy. I see some of that sort of stuff but I wanted to see it in context. The hapless male is dragged along to a Butler Cafe, where women are served delicate pastries by beautiful young men, costume shops, and comic book stores catering to women's fantasies of pretty boys making out with each other. It develops into a serious romance story, with each having to overcome different obstacles to find true love. Mostly educational, but it makes learning fun. 5/10

Movies

Don't Tell the Wife (1937) Guy Kibbee and Una Merkel get top billing in this RKO bill-filler. Merkel is the wife of a Wall Street Hustler, Kibbee the duffer duped into fronting for a phony gold mine company. Takes the idea and runs with it, then flips it around in the last reel so justice is served and virtue rewarded. Some good laughs, but it emits sleep-rays through the middle third which almost put both of us out. You could do worse. 4/10

The Face of Marble (1946) I'll bet you anything that someone at Monogram Studios said, "We need a movie called The Face of Marble and this is when we need it by." Completely incoherent script from start to finish, especially the finish. John Carradine is a scientist working on a means of reviving the dead, but the revived fall under the sway of his voodoo housekeeper and gain the ability to walk through closed doors. A revived dog becomes a sort of ghost vampire. The titular face is a momentary side-effect of the revival process which plays no part in the proceedings. A ridiculous muddle of pseudo-science and voodoo with flashing neon and spark machines, directed by champion hack William Beaudine. The best feature of the film is statuesque Maris Wrixon, who spends most of her screen time in a luscious satin nightgown. This movie stands as evidence that a really lousy script can be far more entertaining than a pretty good one. 6/10

Maris Wrixon, an ornament to any laboratory.

Movies

Wild River (1960) High-class big-budget Elia Kazan drama set in 1930s Tennessee. Montgomery Clift is the guy who has to get a stubborn old woman off her island before the dam is finished and she's flooded out, Lee Remick the widowed granddaughter/love interest. A well-presented story that carries you along with it at a steady pace, but it's not really compelling or stirring. My choice for Family Movie Night, and it was satisfactory. 6/10

I Was a Shoplifter (1950) A peppy little Universal Studios B-movie crime drama depicting the pursuit of a criminal gang which blackmails amateur department-store shoplifters into working for them under threat of public exposure. Scott Brady is the young handsome hero, Tony Curtis a minor ethnic hoodlum, with few familiar faces in the rest of the cast. Cracks right along and shows some interesting shoplifting techniques along the way. It's edutainment! 7/10

Movies

The Driver's Seat (1974) One of the most unusual films of Elizabeth Taylor's career. Sort of an art film, kind of a mystery thriller, it's hard to know what to say about this. It's more like an unpleasant dream, with surreal and atmospheric scenes and broken-up time sequence. Taylor is a great actress because, though a natural beauty, she never hesitated to take roles which required her to be ugly and terrible in some way. Here she is a sort of madwoman in search of her death in an alienating and malicious world. Unsettling in concept and execution, it's no wonder this is one of the most misunderstood and underestimated movies of her career. A sort of masterpiece in a way. This was purchased at Target during the short golden age of the dollar DVD, and I had been wanting to show it to Donna for a couple of years but was afraid she would hate it - to my surprise she liked it quite a bit. So do I. I would be very happy to see a nice widescreen print of this some day. 9/10

Movies

Mad Love (1935) This was my choice for family movie night. Another classic I have read about all my life but never seen until now. We were astonished at how much was packed into this short film, a masterpiece of expressionist qrotesquerie. It just snaps right along with one thing after another. Lorre as the deranged hand-transplanting surgeon is amazing, and I especially enjoyed the visual contrast between the Caligariesque setting of his private clinic and the gleaming and elaborate modern medical devices. A superior effort in every way 10/10

Then back to work:

The Satan Bug (1965) Expensive biological warfare thriller, with the deadliest virus ever created stolen from a secret desert lab. Nicely filmed in Panavision, which made good use of the horizontal desert setting. Proceeds at an orderly pace without getting too exciting. 5/10

Maidens of Fetish Street (1966) Dreadful exploitation flick that I sat through to see the kind of crap a guy had to endure just to see some footage of gals with no shirts on. These crappy nudies seem to fall back on having a narrator of some sort, faking up a near-plot to provide the "redeeming social value" required to keep it from being classified as obscene. One really long hour. 1/10

Movies

Mahabali Hanuman (1981) I have always loved fantasy, religious and fairy tale movies and this combines the best of them all. This bright colorful and elaborate fantasy movie is every bit as remarkable as the European and Russian fairy tale films I love, while being a tale of devotion and the moral development of the protagonist. Hanuman is born as a boon granted to his barren mother through her unceasing prayers, he is granted great powers by all the gods, and he becomes the most dedicated of devotees. This is the Hindu movie I have always wanted to see - I grew up wishing that the dreary religious movies about people wandering through the desert in robes had something more fantastical and inspiring to them. If I had seen something like this as a child I would have become a sincere Hindu at that moment, and it certainly restored my love for Hinduism's wonderful pantheon. Bright colors and moving shapes, song and dance numbers, magical transformations, elaborate yet slightly cheesy spectacle, and edifying moral lessons all in one. 10/10

Shiva grants Anjana the boon of a son.

The gods bestow upon Hanuman many powers.

Hanuman manifests the Vishnu Avatars.

Rama and Sita are always in his heart.

Movies

Let Us Be Gay (1930) Norma Shearer is nearly unrecognizable as a dowdy housewife humiliated by her husband's infidelity. Three years after their divorce she is an Independent Modern Woman and they encounter each other again. Hence the gaiety of the title - heavily forced to show she "doesn't care" and it got so every time she giggled I just wanted to slap her. This is my least favorite Norma Shearer movie so far and I just want to see one where she doesn't get divorced at the beginning and then get back with her husband again in the final shot of the film. 4/10

Before divorce.

After.

RRRrrr!!! (2004) French caveman comedy. Has its moments, with more laughs than the Ringo one. It's a comedy, about cavemen. I like how all the animals have tusks, even the ducklings. Donna slept through part of it, and rightly so. 5/10

Movies

Mary and Max (2009) This was on Donna's list of movies she wanted to see, but she couldn't remember why it was on there. Australian stop-motion animation, well executed, of the variety that is called "edgy" because it is occasionally tasteless and repulsive, and attempts to balance it out by being maudlin. "Adult" without being mature. Not what either of us really care for. 3/10

Movies

The Earth Dies Screaming (1965) A very small end of the world movie, with half a dozen baffled survivors in a British village facing enigmatic alien robots and blank-eyed remote-controlled corpses. It's full of slow-moving threats from which people are unable to escape, since they hide by running into a room and leaving the door open. This is one of a number of similar British films at that time, such as Night of the Big Heat, based on the novel by John Lymington, who made a career of writing novels about a small group of people trapped in a village by a mysterious force. Doesn't live up to its title. 4/10

Wonder Bar (1934) One evening's events in a high-class nightclub in Paris. I had read that this film contains some of Busby Berkeley's most spectacular work but I didn't know why it wasn't readily available. Now I know. It must have been incredibly expensive to produce, with huge numbers of dancers, costumes, forty-foot moving pillars and other props, and some scenes are shot in a closed room walled with gigantic mirrors, creating a vast space filled with moving forms. Al Jolson stars, and he gives an amazing performance of songs, offhand gags and vaudeville routines. Dolores Del Rio is resplendent in a backless lame' gown and metallic satin jacket with mink sleeves. Every dress is completely nuts - even the dowagers were wearing eye-popping attire. Dick Powell sings, Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert drink and try to evade their wives. The plot is mere filler between insanely elaborate spectacles. What killed the film for television is not the gay joke or the sadistic gaucho dance, but the astounding production number in which Jolson rides to blackface heaven on a mule. I don't think any other movie contains so many blacked up white folks as this, not to mention the relentless depiction of the most painfully obvious stereotypes. Blackface heaven contains Lincoln worship, porkchop trees, an automatic chicken roasting machine, and of course free watermelons in the blackface heaven version of Harlem. Even his dog and mule end up with tinfoil wings in blackface heaven. I think everyone ought to see this, just so they can see what kind of bizarre and deranged stuff was once considered perfectly normal and acceptable entertainment. This is the sort of screwed up thing I pick for Family Movie Night. 10/10 for being one of the damnedest things I ever did see.

THIS IS BAD. DON'T DO THIS:

Marse Linkum is patron saint of Blackface Heaven

Blackfaces love watermelon.

Movies

Danger: Diabolik (1968) John Phillip Law is fantastically attractive as the masked super-criminal Diabolik. Directed by Mario Bava, based on a comic strip, this is the perfect venue for Bava's wild talents. Diabolik's subterranean lair is a vast hallucination, and the Night Club Scene is the most bizarre and amazing I have ever seen. The theft of a twenty-ton giant ingot of solid gold was fantastic in every sense of the word. The super-criminal, such as Diabolik, Fantomas, Mabuse, Lupin or The Black Lizard, as a character and genre has been shamefully neglected in these decadent times, while idiotic allegiance to primitive ideas of law and justice are spoon-fed to the masses as virtues to prevent their rising up against their evil masters. The world awaits its deliverer. Until then, this fantasy will have to do. 8/10

Adaptation (2002) This is the kind of movie Donna chooses, and I end up watching them just because I like to learn about things. I would never have picked it myself, but ended up enjoying it quite a bit. This movie shows how helpful it can be to listen to your stupid half - one of the best things I ever learned. I don't understand how Nicholas Cage can be such a good actor and still end up in so many brain-dead action spectaculars. Chris Cooper gets the toothless redneck genius thing down with deadly precision. Pretty good stuff if you like quality. 8/10 for completely different reasons from the above.

Movies

Disney High School Musical China (2010) I liked High School Musical a lot because it is a pure, non-ironic reversion to the basics of the artform. I liked this even more because it takes that and puts it into a different culture, reflecting a different set of mores and ideals. It is blindingly colorful, intensely choreographed, with a harder rocking beat and less (or at least different) melodramatic formula. I was soothed into a state of vegetable delight. I suppose there is no way to see it legally in the U.S. and it seems to be actively suppressed online. As a lover of the artform, I found this to be the best modern musical I have seen since the original. 10/10

Match Factory Girl (1990) Finnish film, directed by Kaurismaaki, in which a young woman's every attempt to find a little happiness in life is mercilessly crushed. Not as much of a downer as it sounds though, as Kaurismaaki's films, however bleak and sparse, always leave a strange feeling of calm satisfaction. His aesthetics and ideals seem to match mine precisely - I never say "I didn't like that part," or "I wouldn't have done it that way," and he obviously loves machines and industrial spaces as I do. There is no filler, and every shot is a beautiful composition, no matter what is happening. His influence on the modern Quirky Independent Film is obvious, just as obvious as the fact that they are trying to do what he does and not succeeding. The characters sit silent and immobile in a state of perpetual discomfort with life, but they are thinking and feeling beings with human souls, not goofy cartoon characters being weird for weirdness' sake. Probably only about a hundred words are spoken in this too-short, hour-long film and it makes me long for that imaginary Finland, where people aren't always yapping at you or each other or themselves. This was Donna's viewing choice for the evening. 10/10

Mark of the Vampire (1935) A deliberate cartoonish mockery of a vampire movie, with Barrymore as the vampire expert, Atwill as the angry policeman, Donald Meek as the local doctor, and you know who as The Count. An incoherent script makes it seem as if production was halted before they were through shooting everything and they just stuck together what they had. There are a few effective, but almost laughably stereotypical, scenes and sequences, but it's not sure if it wants to be a satire or not. Leila Bennett does the same comedy-relief maid she did in Doctor X, though she is not given as much to do here, and Carroll Borland carves in stone the Vampire Woman cliches for all time to come. If you are really into vampires, see it. As a movie it kind of stinks. 4/10

Movies

Donna and I both enjoyed Scott Prendergast's short film The Delicious so much when we saw it a while back, we thought we would try his feature film Kabluey (2007) for Family Movie Night. Luckily I had a backup ready because after a seeming eternity of SCREAMING HORRIBLE CHILDREN scenes we just couldn't take any more and will never get to see whether it is really any good or not. The backup was Caveman (1981), which I wasn't able to easily obtain when we were going through caveman movies a couple of years ago. The animated dinosaurs are the real stars of this not entirely funny comedy, but at least nobody was SHRIEKING continuously in it. 5/10

Addendum: Donna says she is going to try to watch the rest of Kabluey, after reading more about it online. I have wished her luck.

I got back to work after that and watched Beast of the City (1932), a hard-edged prohibition drama. Walter Huston is the police chief dedicated to cleaning up his gangster-infested town. A clear backlash against the gangster movies of the day, and it doesn't pull any punches. The Hollywood Ending was not mandatory at that time and it gets pretty rough at the end. Includes Jean Harlow as a scheming gun moll and Mickey Rooney, a tiny speck of a kid. 7/10

Movies

Woman Chases Man (1937) Miriam Hopkins is the poor girl, Joel McCrea is the rich boy in this screwball comedy. Lots of fast talking, scheming, and absurdly complicated situations. Gets to be a lot of shouting and fighting at the end which I find wearisome, but overall it was pretty cute despite its lack of a negligee scene. 7/10