This Week in Rixflix #15: June 16-22, 2017

As I predicted in last week's column, my revived interest in westerns due to the online film course in which I was taking part found me continuing my deep plunge back into the genre. While I purposefully avoided them for the first three days of the week in question, six of the last eleven films I watched were in the western genre, including my 84th John Wayne feature, Dakota, as well as The Hangman, The Last Frontier, Comanche Territory, and The Kentuckian. I had planned to watch the Duke in The Undefeated (and had announced it last week too), but it fell by the wayside at the tail end of the week when I ran into a 1946 Jacques Tourneur film called Canyon Passage.

With but a single viewing, I already have to count Canyon Passage amongst my favorite films in the western style (though it is more of a "pioneer" film and mostly takes place in a forest area). Tourneur, who directed many of my favorite horror films from the Golden Age such as Cat People, Night of the Demon, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man, as well as the noir classic Out of the Past, is always on my must-see list, and being able to track down another one of his westerns had me diving into the film the moment that I found it online. For that matter, being a fan of Dana Andrews' acting too, it was grand to see him outdo himself in one of his finest performances here. Helpful, too, was the inclusion of Susan Hayward in the female lead, in a place where I would not have expected her. The best role was that portrayed by songwriter Hoagy Carmichael as a neighboring business owner who seems to end up in the middle of everything while roaming about playing his ukulele and singing songs (and getting an Oscar nomination to boot). Fully loaded with tough guy fist-fighting, swirling gun action, sordid business dealings, a romantic triangle bound for trouble, and those swell Carmichael tunes, I am most certain that Canyon Passage will get watched again by me rather soon.

I found myself with some unexpected downtime this week, and as a result, my numbers were really up overall. I had hoped by this time of the year that I would be tailing off and perhaps get down to just one or two films per day, but I have been far more focused on watching things lately than writing about them, or even in doing other projects. That will have to change – in fact, I rather demand that I change it by force – but with the TCM Hitchcock online course just starting (as of this writing), in which I will be most likely attempting to watch all 42 features (and two short films) of Hitch's they are spotlighting through the month of July, it will be interesting to see what happens. I also have some time on the road to see family coming up soon, and thus I will have no access to my normal channels for viewing in that span (though I will have an iPad with me). The two events should even each other out, but then again, with my ability to cram in film viewings at any given opportunity, you never know. (Hmm... maybe I will get my dad to watch Canyon Passage with me. That's right up his alley...)

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 26; 19 first-time viewings and 7 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: The Big Sleep (1946) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016) – 2/9
Average films per day in June so far: 3.13
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.03
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 191

The Reviews:

Raiders from Beneath the Sea (1964) Dir.: Maury Dexter – I record an awful lot of films simply because I hope that there will be a shark scene or two inside one of them. Quite often it is because I have heard there might be such a scene, but mostly, I look at the premise of the film or the shooting location or, in the case of this film, merely the title, and see promise that I might be graced with the presence of toothy, finny friends. A low budget creaker from "B" movie vet Maury Dexter (The Day Mars Invaded Earth, Surf Party, Hell's Belles), Raiders from Beneath the Sea is a true snooze-fest about four Neanderthals planning the dumbest armed robbery in the history of dumb armed robberies, specifically, holding up a small bank on Catalina Island while walking all the way from the pier and back in full scuba gear. Yeah, it doesn't go smooth, and while you only have to wait about an hour to get to the heist, that hour seems to take about fourteen. Sure, these raiders do indeed come from beneath the sea to do their crimes, but they barely hit the water in the buildup to those crimes. The bad guys certainly talk about diving a lot, but most of their time on the water is spent timing out their trips to the island via its famous ferry and working out how to make off with the loot afterward. (As it turns out, a magnetized plate that they slap to the underside of the ferry.) When they finally do get in the water, it is for the briefest, murkiest underwater footage this side of Catalina Caper, another 1960s heist flick that at least made some attempts at intentional humor, however hackneyed. (And if you've watched Caper as it was tortured on MST3K, it then became truly fantastic.) This one, though, has no such such saving grace; poorly made, poorly filmed exploitation, but apart from some peeping tom shenanigans on the part of the lead character's creepy, drunken brother as he gets off to Merry Anders, Raiders' tank barely allows it to make it offshore. And by the end, there is not one damn shark to be seen. At least Catalina Caper had an animated one in its opening credits.   – TC4P Rating: 3/9

S if for Stanley (2015) Dir.: Alex Infascelli – Hardly a week goes by that I am not surprised by the appearance of some new documentary on Amazon Prime, Hulu or Netflix about the making of a particular film or the work of a filmmaker. Last week, it was Becoming Bond; this week, there are two such films that I will cover, the first being S Is for Stanley, the story of Emilio D’Alessandro, Stanley Kubrick's driver and personal assistant for a thirty-year period beginning in the early '70s when Kubrick was making A Clockwork Orange. It seems that Kubrick was impressed by Emilio's demeanor when he showed up as the delivery man for that certain, massive ceramic phallic piece that is used in one of the attack scenes in that epic of ultra-violence, and instantly hired the man to be his Man Friday. The film takes us through each Kubrick film all the way through Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick's death in 1999, mostly told by Emilio himself, a former race car driver who suddenly found himself immersed in Kubrick's obsessive nature. (His wife also plays a big part in relating events to us.) It is clear, at least from the material given here, that he and Kubrick formed a close bond that could not be shaken, even when Emilio left his employ for a handful of years. Usually, I find that a film documentary that is not rife with clips from the films under discussion is usually to be found lacking in flavor, but that is not the case here. There are enough behind the scenes details and set photographs to keep one interested throughout, and it is almost enough that Emilio has plenty of marvelous vignettes about his life spent catering to Kubrick's every possible whim that the film never gets tiresome. D'Alessandro is an engaging interviewee with a rather introspective way of looking at life, and it is perhaps that very quality that kept him at Kubrick's side for so long. I do wish someone from Kubrick's family had weighed in here and there, but overall, an enjoyable look at a side of filmmaking well off the set most of the time. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

A Canterbury Tale (1944) Dir.: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – With every film by the Archers that I check off my list, I feel my cinematic knowledge and eye becoming purer and sharper. Such is the way that the films of Powell and Pressburger play off of me, always elegant, always studied, always balanced deeply with wit, irony, grace and heart. In A Canterbury Tale, while it starts out with a visual nod to the older work by Chaucer, this tale swiftly transports itself to then-modern times – during World War II in the British countryside – as we are introduced to a trio of "pilgrims" all making their way to the same location, or thereabouts, for differing reasons. We are given army sergeants both British (Dennis Price, the lead from one of my all-time faves, Kind Hearts and Coronets) and American (actual U.S. Army sergeant John Sweet) and a "Land Girl", a term used for women hired during the war to replace men on farms who were off serving in the army, here played charmingly by Sheila Sim. The three bond almost instantly over a mystery that they encounter when they reach the fictitious town of Chillingbourne (though supposedly set near Canterbury), when Sim has glue poured into her hair by a shadowy assailant. The mystery will consume most of their time and direct their actions during the film, during which they encounter the fourth major character of the film, the local magistrate played by Eric Portman, who will prove both daunting and helpful in turn during their investigations. Films by the Archers are almost always more than merely the sum of their parts, and that is the case here. There is so much going on in every scene, that it is easy to lose the plot because the characters and scenarios are each individually engaging enough to make you want to live inside the film for days. Especially effective is the non-actor Sweet, whose off-the-cuff but oddly effective delivery of his lines make you wish he had found greater acting opportunities on the screen elsewhere. (His IMDb resume only lists one other film, both biographical details do say he did some theatre in the ensuing years before he died in 2011 at the age of 95.) A very worthwhile and lovely experience, as is nearly every film by Powell and Pressburger. – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) Dir.: John Campopiano and Justin White – This is the other film documentary that I mentioned briefly above in the S Is for Stanley review. Popping up on Amazon Prime at the exact moment that I really needed this type of film to fill some open time, Unearthed and Untold is a pretty detailed look at the production of the late '80s horror classic (yeah, I said it) Pet Sematary. While I was never a huge fan of the film at the time (though I liked it just fine), I have grown fonder of it over the years, during which I have had the opportunity to see it a couple of times more. Unearthed and Untold gathers just about any artist and actor who worked on Pet Sematary that was willing to recount their tales of working on the film, and despite there not being any actual final film footage from the production (probably because they didn't have the budget for it), this film is pretty thorough with its excellent use made of behind-the-scenes photos and video that gives us a neat glimpse into how it all went down on the set. Visits to the location sites in Maine are an added and sometimes rather creepy bonus. Even Marky Ramone, the sole main member of the Ramones left alive today, gets in briefly to talk about how they were brought in to provide songs on the soundtrack and record the title song. The big question is whether tiny Miko Hughes had turned into a murderous psycho after being subjected to some truly horrific scenes as a two-year-old (they even talk about being worried about at points in the film), but no... Miko is just fine and still acting at age 31, and seems a normal guy here in his interview scenes. The doc is sorely missing the inclusion of a fresh interview with King himself about the film, but I don't know that they didn't try to get one, so I will leave that as a stray thought. I am certain that somewhere in the near future, my writing partner Aaron and I will be re-reading Stephen King's original novel and watching Mary Lambert's film freshly to review and compare both for our Stephen King site, We Who Watch Behind the Rows. (Yes, this is an unabashed and unashamed plug.) – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom (2016) Dir.: Sean Patrick O'Reilly – There are many things that I really hate in films, but two of them are very evident here in Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom. First, I hate badly done computer animation. I can live with a single bad CGI shot or two in a larger film if their harm to the film is contained to a few seconds, and I can be accepting of a limited animation budget if the film in question is a mere few minutes and at least has a clever premise or voice performance to counter it. The other thing I hate is "Muppet Babying," where a franchise or character is cleaned up and/or dumbed down from its original form to appeal to a younger audience. This video feature is pretty much just "What if H.P. Lovecraft was a kid?" and has him having all sorts of misadventures on another dimensional plane with a monstrous tentacled pal that he names Spot, not knowing the creature is actually a younger form of the Elder god Cthulhu himself. I am a fan of Lovecraft's writing, but I am fairly certain that I am happy with the proper age for discovering his writing being approximately around the same as when I did, as a middle teenager, and not when young readers are six or seven, which seems to be the target audience for this film. It's not so much the existential dread and horrific implications of his words that causes me to state this, but rather the more than casual racism that also lurks within his stories, perhaps not in all of them but lightly throughout most and pretty hard in some. Such words might fly over the heads of many younger readers, especially since the style of his writing is itself antiquated enough by today's standards that his stories may seem rather dull to a generation that banks upon immediate thrills and not slow-boiling suspense and atmosphere. This is all for the better, and I find it fairly hard to believe that watching this animated crap pile will inspire anyone to seek out anything written on paper except perhaps to carefully edit their own self-penned suicide note.

This video pretty much jettisons anything worthwhile in Lovecraft's writing and mostly co-opts character and place names along with the occasional magical spell and slams them into a stiffly animated, witless, cliched children's film. The look of some of the goblin guards from Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty are also swiped for that of the villainous henchmen throughout the film as well. I have not read the graphic novels that form the basis for this film (nor for the planned sequel and the inevitable third production, since there are three comics in total), but taking a quick look at the first few pages of the Frozen Kingdom volume reveals that hewing closer to the style of the comic would have been a far more intriguing direction. At least in a visual sense, the comic doesn't look half bad (though a little generic). Instead, in the film version we get a design that pretty much made me feel like I was watching the truly atrocious Food Fight again, and goddamnit, I never needed to have that feeling! I've lived through it once. The only compliment I can give is that at least the story made a little more sense scene to scene than Food Fight, and for that I am truly thankful. The other thing that got my notice in Frozen Kingdom is that there are hammerhead sharks in the tank of the villain's fortress. Sure, they swim the same exact way, over and over again, in every single shot in which they appear, but there are at least sharks here. Otherwise, this video is a bloody mess. But without the blood, of course... this is for the kiddies, after all. Poor, poor kiddies... – TC4P Rating: 2/9

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2016) Dir.: Dominik Hartl – Oh, it is Wednesday? Must be time for yet another goddamn zombie movie... OK, despite my living dead ennui here in 2017, I will say that if I had encountered Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies in 1988, I would have loved it without any reservations. However, it is 2017 and I am where I am at currently, having seen so many zombie films by now that I think I might be one. Sure, Jen and I love iZombie and watch it reverentially (it thrills me to no end that Jen loves a zombie show), but for me, that reverence might be mostly out of obeisance to Ms. Rose McIver. And I still love all the old zombie flicks that I grew up with in the '70s and '80s, and even many of the newer ones, but there are just so many out there now, and they just keep coming... almost like a zombie apocalypse. And everyone thinks they have the greatest, newest twist on the genre, and really, nearly all of them don't. But would I want everyone to stop trying? Of course not. That would block even the occasional innovation, and I don't want that. Lederhosen Zombies is a full-on slapstick gore comedy filmed at a ski resort in the Alps of South Tyrol where someone stupid has the idea to use this untested formula to create instant snow, but of course, what the formula really does is make someone sick enough to turn into an instant zombie instead and the fun begins. Crazy, non-stop action, Rube Goldberg-style gags involving snowboards and skiing equipment, a genuinely insane Austrian barmaid with a fully stocked arsenal for fightin' the undead, and some pretty noxious moments that even had me thinking about blowing chunks early on in the action... that sounds like fun to me. However, many of the jokes are too stilted and don't land with the impact that the filmmakers thought, the editing is pretty haphazard, and the (dubbed) acting is fairly wooden on occasion. Still the insanity is as infectious as a zombie plague, and the film goes by incredibly smoothly at under 80 minutes. A good film for a party night of horror heads. Not that I have been around one of those for, oh, far too many years. (I miss my horror peeps...) I can't rate this one too highly due to its many faults, but I will no doubt watch it again for kicks. – TC4P Rating: 4/9

This Week in Rixflix #14: June 9-15, 2017

Going into this week, there was just one film on my mind: the new Universal version of The Mummy. I had a sense going in that it was probably not going to be great, and in a way that is quite unusual for me, I did not prepare for the film by watching a marathon of the original Universal Mummy flicks (all six of them, including the Abbott and Costello one), nor did I wade into the later Universal Mummy series with Brendan Fraser. (And don't even get me started on The Scorpion King spin-off series... to be fully honest, I am no fan of the Fraser films either.) Instead, I concentrated on other films and just waited for The Mummy to arrive. Jen had no interest in all with it and told me to "go see your buddy Tom" (a running gag that I must explain fully at some point in the future).

And yeah, the result was rather tepid. I did manage to have fun enjoying the film as a straight ahead monster flick, and enjoyed some of the character and set design. But I am so confused as to why Universal dropped the Universal Monsters label they had been pitching and keeping alive (like the truly undead) for so many decades. Now I can't, officially, say that I am going to the latest Universal Monsters picture, and am instead told that this is the first film of their – big fucking yawn – DARK UNIVERSE series, a title that has already supposedly been co-opted by Warner Brothers and DC Comics for their adaptation of Justice League Dark, which I guess is their own stupid move to not burning out the Justice League brand (even though they put out a comic and an animated film (this year nonetheless!) called Justice League Dark (which I will get to next week). So, now instead of a Universal Monsters series and Justice League Dark live-action, we have two stupid things called Dark Universe from different studios, neither of which has anything to do with the other except for shared elements of basic horror.

I have so much more to gripe about how Universal is screwing up the use of their monster franchises, especially at their theme parks. (You know how annoying it is to walk through Universal Studios in Hollywood and not find a single Dracula shirt in their gift shops? And yet, you can walk straight past the Universal store in CityWalk and go to Things from Another World and find scores of monster t-shirts. The company itself, though, doesn't care for selling its own creations.) Once I saw the new Mummy, apart from watching Svengoolie have fun with The Mummy's Tomb on his show the next day, Universal went away almost immediately in my mind. The film did not propel me into maintaining the mood because there was no real mood to maintain. (Honestly, the films it really reminded me of were Van Helsing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both huge disappointments in my book. I thought the new version of The Mummy was much better than both of them however.) 

I instead spent the week concentrating on classic western films. Five such films to be precise, starting with Stagecoach, and then plowing through They Died with Their Boots On, Red River, Winchester '73, and High Noon throughout the remainder of the week. The reason? An online course on the History of the Western that I found while signing up for TCM's upcoming course on Alfred Hitchcock. I decided to take the Western course to see if I would enjoy and benefit from the experience, and while I still have a few last items to complete, I have passed all of my tests and found it to be great fun. (I still have to watch Fort Apache this weekend, which I don't own anymore but is showing on TCM; Turner Classic Movies isn't hosting this particular online course, so it is complete coincidence that it is airing.) Mostly, I enjoyed simply watching each of these films again, even the one that I don't like all that much (the Custer one starring Errol Flynn).

Next week, you will notice that the aftermath of taking this course has done something the new Mummy movie couldn't. It inspired me to do an immersion in a bunch of westerns over a couple of days, including one this morning (the day of this writing). I have more lined up for this weekend, including two more John Wayne films, that should be the 86th and 87th films of his that I have seen in my lifetime. (Just writing that last part exhausted me...) I may not enjoy the western genre as much as I do classic horror or film noir, but I have always had more than a quiet appreciation for the genre, and taking this course has truly made me remember my roots in film, having watched a great number of western films and shows growing up in the '70s. 

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 24; 13 first-time viewings and 11 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Red River (1948), Stagecoach (1939), Out of the Past (1948), Winchester '73 (1950), High Noon (1952), and The Lost Weekend (1945) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature films: Island of Lost Women (1959) – 4/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.86
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.02
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 184

The Reviews:

Becoming Bond (2016) Dir.: Josh Greenbaum – Riding to physical therapy on the bus towards Riverside, I looked out the window at one of the bus stops and saw the smirking face of George Lazenby staring back at me. I was absolutely not expecting it, and in my half-awake daze, I started to wonder if I had really seen the poster that I had or if I had some strange daydream in which Lazenby popped in for a non-sequitur cameo. Riding on the bus back, I managed to look across the several lanes and see the poster at that stop. Then I started wondering if it was a film playing at a theatre at the mall next to that bus stop. Looking up the Jurupa Valley theatre there, I found no such reference to such a film as Becoming Bond. Riding the bus two days later (once again to PT), I took a longer look at the sign as we stopped to pick up a couple of passengers. Ah, so it is a Hulu documentary! The second that I got home, I fired up the Hulu page and found myself watching a most surprising and entertaining look at the most unlikely and oddball career of the guy who played James Bond once and lived to tell about it... almost 50 years later. And it is hard, even with it being so entertaining (or especially because of that) to believe many of the stories that spill out the corners of Lazenby's still charming, wide, handsome smile. 

This film may contain some of the best and most imaginative dramatic reenactments that I have ever seen in a supposed documentary, and the use of prime cameos by the likes of Jeff Garlin, Jake Johnson, Jane Seymour, and especially Dana Carvey (doing a full-size Johnny Carson impression) make this film a bouncy, fun trifle. Some names do get changed to keep off the lawsuit monsters, and so those not already aware at least lightly about Lazenby's story coming in may be confused about who is who behind the scenes on his single Bond effort, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It is no secret that OHMSS is my personal favorite of the entire Bond series, so I had no problems. In fact, this film goes down so smoothly, I don't care at all if ol' Georgie Boy is stretching the truth a little bit here and there. You know, just like the best spies do...  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Phantom Lady (1944) Dir.: Robert Siodmak – One of the joys of watching TCM's Noir Alley show on Sunday mornings is not necessarily discovering obscure film noir gems but actually speeding up the inevitability that I will get to each of these films on my own naturally. I am so attuned to tracking down as many of these films that I can that I really begin to surprise myself more and more when I watch a truly incredible example that has largely slipped by my notice to this point in time. Such is the case of the truly insane drumming scene by Elisha Cook, Jr. midway through this film as he practically drools over the prospect of an evening spent with the admittedly smoking hot Ella Raines. Cook bashes the drums in a sweat-filled jazz room in such an increasingly rabid manner that you swear he is going to collapse in post-orgasmic exhaustion. In the words of Doug Stanhope: "Blort!!!" (Raines is definitely blort-worthy, and is she ever gorgeous throughout this film.) Phantom Lady is soaked in noir atmosphere, and boy, is the villain (I won't say who) an utter creep every second he is onscreen (and they give it away fairly early anyway). I am not so big on the set-up of the film involving the lady in the outrageous hat who becomes the catalyst to the mystery, but I believe a viewing down the road may relieve me of my initial reluctance to accept this film wholeheartedly. With noir, familiarity only breeds greater obsession. Once you are in, you can never get out... – TC4P Rating: 7/9

The Strawberry Blonde (1941) Dir.: Raoul Walsh – When I saw this title pop up on TCM one afternoon, it was a total impulse watch for me. Deep in my movie history is the knowledge that The Strawberry Blonde was the very first film featuring James Cagney that I ever saw as a kid, and I had not really sat down to watch it since then. The real coincidence though comes from the fact that this film was directed by Raoul Walsh in the same year in which he lensed They Died with Their Boots On, one of the six classic westerns I watched this week for the Western Film History course. On a personal level, I enjoyed this film much more, especially as a showcase for Olivia de Havilland, who may play second fiddle to Rita Hayworth as the titular character, but who is (eventually) first in the heart of the film's main character. Cagney's tough guy dentist is by turns blustery and amusing, and well matched by de Havilland's slightly more intentionally modern (and shocking to others) version of a female at the turn of the 20th century. The film is caked thick in nostalgia for a bygone era but also is just spry enough to know that wallowing in it too long is no good for anyone. Cagney's dentist realizes he must move forward and so must the viewer. A far more rewarding return to this film for me than I expected. – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Girl of the Port (1930) Dir.: Bert Glennon – A guy wallowing in self-pity and clearly suffering from PTSD from his World War I experience loses himself in the Fiji Islands. He falls in love with a barmaid who works in the saloon where he has chosen to drink himself to death, but he doesn't let on that he is a British lord who is hiding out from his family and peers. And it is an appropriate thing that his war scars are embodied by a crippling fear of fire (from being surrounded by enemy flamethrowers) because the natives of the island practice the art of fire-walking. Eventually, all of this is going to work out exactly as you suspect from the start, and the film is fairly creaky as it glides by rather mechanically. But Sally O'Neil is pretty charismatic as the love interest, and the war scenes are well sketched (if not nearly on the same battlefield as All Quiet on the Western Front artistically). Intriguing enough for a quickie talkie but no more. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

The Boy (2016) Dir.: William Brent Bell – There are just so many of these types of horror films today that it becomes hard to recall which ones one has seen or not. Luckily, the inclusion of Lauren Cohan (The Walking Dead) was pretty much the only catalyst I needed to allow this one into my life. We have here another creepy doll movie, and I must say that this is not my favorite subgenre of horror. Fine with the Chucky series and a few other examples of the ventriloquist dummy variety, but I just really don't clamor for them when we start talking porcelain or baby dolls. Sure, I find them equally creepy -- all dolls are that way naturally -- but the films using those types usually are too far out of my disbelief range. The doll here is a boy who may or may not contain the black-hearted soul of an elderly English couple's son, who died mysteriously decades earlier. The couple insist on treating the doll like their dead son, Cohan is hired as an au pair to spell them for a short vacation, and all sorts of madness begins. The film had me until about halfway, until coincidence and logic refused to play together nicely any longer. Cohan is good in the role, though, as is Rupert Evans as the local delivery grocer who develops a more than slight interest in Cohan's well-being and other parts. Overall, the film is well filmed with an interesting score by Bear McCreary, but I can only give it a TC4P Rating: 5/9.

This Week in Rixflix #13: June 2-8, 2017

Boy, did my movie count dip the week of June 2-8, and if I had not watched a slew of films those first four days (13 of the 18 films overall), it probably would have been even less. The reason? The buildup to the James Comey testimony, then the actual sessions, and the discussion in the aftermath ate up so much of my spare time on the weekdays that it was really hard to think about anything else.

This year has been so dominated by news about He-Who-Must-Be-Orange that it is no wonder that I have smothered my senses so intensely in movie after movie after movie. It's not the real reason that I watch so many films, but an outsider, knowing at the least of my political leanings, could only surmise that the continued presence of President Rage Toddler has me in such a deep depression that I can only find solace by immersing myself in film history. Well, he does not. He annoys the hell out of me every time I even think about his voice or face, but he has no effect on my film viewing habits. Except when there is the possibility of hearings that will hopefully lead to exposing his criminal ways once and for all on legal grounds – not just on social media, though he does a fine job of that himself – that will – hopefully – eventually get him and his graceless family expelled from the White House.

No, I just naturally watch film after film – I have done this for most of my life, and will continue to do so because for me it is simply a part of breathing. I wake up, I put on a movie, I watch a big chunk of it, maybe I will stop it to write for a while, grab some breakfast, watch another 40 minutes of the film, or maybe I finish watching it instead and then write... it really depends on where the day takes me. Not having regular work has made it even easier to immerse myself in these activities, but even when I did have a solid gig, I still managed to average 2-3 films a day. As I said, it's how I breathe...

[Note: the above was written today during the news of the Washington shooting at the baseball field. There is a lot of talk about how deeply divided we are today, and I have always agreed that bipartisanship is the only way to get things done for this country. However, the White House is going to use this opportunity to try to distract us and pave over the investigations going on currently involving Drumpf and his toadies. However much I want peace and harmony in this country and especially the world, I also want the Angry Orange permanently away from any shiny, candy-colored buttons in the War Room. This must be achieved lawfully and correctly, and without any violence, as the use of violence in our democratic process degrades us all.]

The Numbers:

This week's feature-length film count: 18; 12 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature film: Shark Babes (2015) – 2/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.37
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.0063
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen: 177

The Reviews:

The New Land [aka Nybyggarna] (1972) Dir.: Jan Troell – A couple of years ago, I watched the first of two films by Jan Troell about Swedish immigrants in the United States trying desperately to survive as they traveled through a strange new world in the mid-19th century. That film was called The Emigrants, and it was a remarkably vivid portrayal of people who could lived hardscrabble lives that were likely quite similar to those of my own Swedish ancestors at the same time. That the location of the land where the main characters set up their farm in Minnesota is less than an hour by car today from the county where my father grew up just across the border and north a bit in Wisconsin drives the point home even harder. The follow-up film, The New Land, based like The Emigrants, on the same series of novels by Vilhelm Morberg, is like its predecessor in that it is intricately and lovingly detailed with period touches and also glacially paced. (Both films are well over three hours in running time, so the easily bored should endeavor to avoid this pair.) But slow going does not mean the films weren't completely spellbinding to me, if not a little off-putting at times in how the immigrants react to their new surroundings and its inhabitants. This film in particular has the main characters, played by Bergman regulars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, learning to deal with the native Sioux in the area. The use of indigenous peoples in The New Land is certainly far different than most American portrayals on film, and it will prove most effective when the story contains elements of the Sioux Uprising of 1862, which leads to some of the more jarringly graphic imagery in the film. I am not sure that I would wish to take this journey on film again, though if I did, I would prefer to watch both films back to back. And maybe with some of my older relatives to dig into their memories of our ancestors' corresponding experiences. Fascinating films overall.  – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Yentl (1983) Dir.: Barbara Streisand – There has not been a moment since 1983 where I haven't been prone to suddenly singing in mock fashion the words "Papa can you hear me?" And yet, I have never actually seen Yentl, the film musical directed, produced and starring Barbara Streisand from which the song that carries that line is derived. I had tried to watch it on VHS and cable back in the day but always pulled out of it, and in recent years had recorded it on DVR a handful of times but never quite watched it. Now, I tell you this because your first thought is going to be "Well, yeah, you're a guy (and presumably straight)... why would you want to watch a Barbara Streisand film, especially where she sings?" Well, I grew up with Streisand played in our house, and one memorable evening, I watched a network TV showing of What's Up Doc?, her 1972 Peter Bogdanovich romantic comedy with Ryan O'Neal. The film became a favorite, I came to understand that she was a terrific comedienne and actress, and accepted her from that moment onward. Sure, her music is not my thing normally, but she has that incredible voice, which is featured prominently in Yentl, though I found the music to really be secondary to the story in the film. It's big and brash and lovingly filmed (the heart is quite apparent in the storytelling), but wondered if maybe the musical portion of it wasn't really necessary. Of course, if you take the music out of it, then there is really no reason for a then-40-year-old Streisand to be in the film playing a teenage girl posing as a boy, but if you take her out of it, then the movie doesn't get financed. (The production history is quite convoluted, and really, the more you know about it, the less it looks like a Streisand vanity project in casting herself.) The film is at a tad overlong, and my patience for it actually ran out late in the film, but still I stuck around. It's a pretty film, has some lovely moments, Mandy Patinkin really is a force of nature, and Streisand does just fine despite the whole age thing. And I have checked off another Oscar nominee.  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Joyride (1977) Dir.: Joseph Ruben – I sometimes wonder if people who actually live in New York and L.A. get upset these days when so many productions are filmed in Vancouver, even when the shows and films sometimes take place in N.Y.C. and L.A. Do they gripe about the minutiae as much as people in other places? Ah, studio filming... Me, I grew up in Alaska, and have had to deal most of my life with things being not quite right in the details when productions filmed elsewhere are supposed to take place in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow, or some other (often fictional) Alaskan town. While trying to track down a different film from 1977 a couple of weeks back, a search on YouTube gave me a list of other productions from that year, some of which I had never heard before. One of those titles was named Joyride. Seeing that the film had Robert Carradine, Desi Arnaz Jr., and a young Melanie Griffith in it, a quick look at IMDb revealed that the film is supposed to be about three teenagers taking a literal joyride on the lam as they head up to Alaska. Count me in, if only to see if they actually get anywhere near my home state. Nope... I should have just assumed it was so. Joyride was instead shot in Washington, much like Northern Exposure and many other things with supposedly Alaskan locales. I was expecting typical teen prank antics and low grade sleaze, but the film was far grittier than I expected, with some surprisingly dark turns hidden inside. The watch, however, was lessened by the low quality version that I had found. Still, there was enough that I found of interest that I came away knowing I would like to track down a decent copy in the future. So, did anything in the film seem like the actual Alaska at any point? Only fleetingly, but I figured it was probably accidental, though I am not going to hold it against the film. You do what you can with what you've got...  – TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Dir.: Lewis Gilbert and For Your Eyes Only (1981) Dir.: John Glen – Roger Moore died recently, and while he has never quite been my favorite Bond (I was too influenced by the Connery films early on), Moore had been a constant presence in my life beyond Bond. I grew up watching Moore on two different series: Maverick, where he filled in for a season as Beau, the smooth English cousin of the Maverick brothers after James Garner left the series in 1960, and as The Saint, Simon Templar, on repeats of his 1962-1969 British series. By the time I was twelve, Moore was already established as the new James Bond, having appeared in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun by that point. As I did with the Bond films with Sean Connery, I grew up seeing the films on the occasional Sunday night on ABC, where they were all regularly shown in the '70s. But it wasn't until 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me that I saw a Bond film in the theatre. With my parents' going through their divorce and me at the age where I was incessantly annoying about everything, but going to see movies was becoming most special of all to me (once more, we did not have a movie theatre in our small Alaskan town and had to drive to "big city" Anchorage to see them), my mom left my still too young little brothers with my dad and took me to see Bond on our own. It was showing in a double feature with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (more on that at another time), and we sat in the front row with a Ziploc bag of popcorn that we popped and buttered at home, Doritos that my mom sneaked inside of her bag, and a can of spray cheese in a can to load up the Doritos. It was magnificent!

Moore's death a few weeks ago coincided with the 40th anniversary celebration of the release of The Spy Who Loved Me, which served as arguably the high water mark for his series of seven Bond films at the time (I prefer Golden Gun overall now). I knew it was the anniversary, but hadn't really considered that I might have the chance to see it again on the big screen. Surprise! While we were at the AMC Dine-In Theatres getting ready to watch Wonder Woman on the day it opened, there was a special event advertisement for a double feature showing of Spy and For Your Eyes Only, but the first date (May 31) had past, but the second was in two days (June 4). I didn't really think about it that moment, but by that evening, I had determined that I was going to get to that double feature rain or shine. It meant going by myself since Jen worked, but nothing would stop me. That Sunday, I found myself in Orange, settling in for an afternoon double at the AMC at the Block, and had a terrific experience with the dozen or so other people in the theatre. 

A big thing for me was that these were two of the five Bond films that feature sharks in them (and Spy also has Richard Kiel as the metal-mouthed assassin "Jaws," who quite literally bites a shark to death in the film), but halfway through Spy, while Moore and the gorgeous Barbara Bach are wandering around the Egyptian pyramids, the projector totally stopped, and my fellow patrons and I found ourselves cloaked in darkness for almost 15 minutes. Part of the time, we discussed the film lightly – everyone was greatly enjoying seeing these films on a big screen again – but of course, a couple of us, myself included, ran out to talk to the management, and finally got someone to check on the problem. After the second film was over, the manager was standing by the side as we were exiting and handed each of us a free entry pass for another film, telling us that they didn't know what happened except that the projection system just completely shut down. I will take a free movie ticket any day, and since we saw the whole of the film regardless, no harm, no foul. I got two Bonds, I got Jaws, and most especially, I got tiger sharks. I also saw Alien: Covenant again right before the Bond flicks. That's a full, grand day at the movies for me. – "Spy" TC4P Rating: 7/9; "Eyes" TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Dir.: James Whale – No review here, just some quick editorializing and plugging. My love for the Universal Monsters films goes back ages to my very youth, when I saw most of the original films in my early teen years (with a few exceptions, like the later Mummy films featuring Kharis). I have also owned many of the films on VHS, all of them on DVD, and jumped a good portion of them up to Blu-ray a few years ago. That they are a constant presence in my life is to never be doubted. So, why is it that I still watch them on television every time that they cross my path? I don't mean just on Turner Classic Movies, where a handful of Frankensteins may show up from time to time, and not necessarily just in October when they usually hold special events for horror films. I refer to when something like The Bride of Frankenstein – arguably the most accomplished, giddiest and purest example of the Universal monster film – pops up on MeTV on the Svengoolie show on Saturday nights. 

Well, the answer is that I rarely skip out on watching ol' Sven even if I have seen all of the films he shows dozens of times outside the show. It is no surprise that I have a great fondness for horror host shows (especially if at least mildly professionally executed) and while I did not grow up with Svengoolie as a regular showcase like many others in different parts of the country did, I certainly wish to take advantage of him now, especially since Elvira's latest series only played for a short period and we have to wait a bit for the next MST3K season. (Yes, it has mostly sci-fi trappings, but I still count it in the same vein; they do show a lot of movies with monsters in them.) Me, I don't mind the commercials (if you DVR it, even better, but I like to watch it live) and the 12-yea-old in me still enjoys the intentionally lame jokes and interruptions. I am just happy knowing that someone is still putting Dracula, Godzilla, Frankenstein, and the rest of the gang on TV so that newer generations can discover and enjoy these films for themselves like I did as a kid. And when Rich Koz stops doing the show (he is now 65), hopefully someone else will come along to take up the cause. The monsters must live on!   – TC4P Rating: 9/9

This Week in Rixflix #12: May 26–June 1, 2017

Yet another week, and we find ourselves with a generous slate of actual capsule reviews of several films that caught my eye in various ways in that span. The end of May meant that several television series that the wife and I follow were summing up with season (and sometimes series) finales, but we also found time to crack into new seasons of old favorites like the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. We also spent several hours finally catching up on the last go-around for Grimm, though we still had three episodes left heading into the next week. But who could really concentrate when the looming presence of Wonder Woman premiering on June 2 overrode everything? Really, I just watched everything else to take my mind off that...

The Numbers: 

This week's feature-length film count: 20; 9 first-time viewings and 11 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Rolling Thunder (1977) and Mister Roberts (1955) – 8/9
Lowest rated feature films: Ensign Pulver (1986), Caged Heat (1974) and Blue Crush 2 (2011) – 5/9
Average films per day in May: 2.87
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.02
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 170

The Reviews:

Swamp Thing (1982) Dir.: Wes Craven – Having been a big fan of DC's Swamp Thing character for a number of years, especially when drawn by Berni Wrightson, I remember being very excited ( if not highly surprised) when the Craven-directed film version hit theatres way back in 1982, during my final year of high school. I also remember being pretty disappointed, especially by clunkiness of the battle scenes between Swampy and the Arcane monster. Despite my dislike for the film on first going to it, I have seen the film several times since, and think it is merely fine. While the Arcane monster suit is still completely ridiculous-looking, and the scenes with the villain's rampaging forces maintain my annoyance as well, I now believe that good ol' Wes did alright by dear Swampy after all. There is a heart to be discovered beneath all that foliage, and it is that heart that drives any story about the creature to believability. I feel for the most part that Craven gets that mood absolutely correct in the film's more dramatic scenes, but also balances the film with some darkly humorous lines. A younger Ray Wise might be a tad miscast as Dr. Alec Holland, who will become the Swamp Thing, but vet Louis Jourdan delivers an appropriately smarmy and eye-rolling turn as Arcane. (As long as he too doesn't turn into a monster, the movie is safe.) – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Moonlight (2016) Dir.: Barry Jenkins – I mentioned a couple of weeks back in my short dismissal of La La Land that I was never really allowed to enter the film emotionally, and could therefore make no connection at all with either the main characters of the film nor the musical trappings of the film. I appreciated its technical achievement and some of the acting, but felt it was lacking anything remotely near actual human emotion. Taking a look finally at Moonlight, the film that won the Best Picture Oscar from out of La La Whatever's clutches (that's my name for that film from now on), I had the exact opposite reaction. Even though I live worlds apart from the film's characters – a drug-dealer, his wife, the young, put upon gay child the dealer and his wife take under their wing out of compassion, and the child's drug-addicted prostitute mother – there was nothing but connection on an emotional level for me. This is one of the richest cinematic journeys to which I have seen Oscar commit in eons, but if you think that it is one of those films that starts in darkness and slowly builds to a glorious cascading of heavenly light, you have another thing coming. This film is layered in such a way that it really tells three different stories about the same character at different points in his life, and how his life turns from his reactions to his circumstances. Each slice of his life offers up new surprises, new complications, and old questions waiting to be answered. It is not an easy ride, nor does it ever let you believe it is. But it is refreshing to see what might otherwise become an undiscovered cult classic actually get recognized by the Academy. Some see pandering to the current national discussion regarding race; I just see a highly excellent film getting its due. Next time, Oscar, how about passing some of that love over to Barry Jenkins, the man behind the film? – TC4P Rating: 8/9

No Time for Sergeants (1958) Dir.: Mervyn LeRoy – Time has not been kind to my opinion of this film, which I saw at a fairly youthful age (Andy Griffith was always appreciated in our house). TCM played it on The Essentials recently, and it was clearly a fave of host Alec Baldwin. His co-host, a fully bearded David Letterman, was less enthralled with the film, but still respected it. I do as well, but Letterman is right about the bathroom scene, where he invoked his own rule that "if it wouldn't happen in real life," then he couldn't really accept the premise of the joke. Well, I won't fully agree with that rule, because the films of the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges are loaded with things that couldn't happen in real life, and I have not stopped laughing at them yet. Back to this film, I really like the opening half, where we meet Griffith's seemingly simple and overtly strong hillbilly character who is drummed into basic training with the Air Force. His character, Pvt. Will Stockdale, has a lot of the hick appeal that Griffith would use on his famous What It Was, Was Football monologue, that I used to hear all the time on Dr. Demento. Griffith had played this role first on a television production and then on the Broadway stage, where he earned a Tony nomination. In the film, I start to lose interest when the story reaches the base and turns into a basic service comedy for an hour of its running time; it never totally lost me, however, and the final portion (involving a flight through a nuclear test region) still came off as wacky fun for me. I just had higher expectations overall after having waited so long to see it again. That makes me more of a Letterman than a Baldwin ultimately in this battle, and I think that I am fine with that. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Ensign Pulver (1964) Dir.: Joshua Logan – On the same day that I watched Ensign Pulver, I also watched the film that preceded it, the 1955 version of Mister Roberts. In that film, Pulver is played by Jack Lemmon, and what more can I say except that Lemmon won the first of his two Oscars for his supporting role in that part? The part is a showstopper in many ways, and Lemmon used it to really break through the big time in high fashion. Nearly ten years later, there came this sequel, written and directed by Joshua Logan, who not only directed and co-wrote the original stage version of Mister Roberts but also served as the uncredited co-director of a few scenes on the film version after John Ford got ill and Mervyn LeRoy left the production. The task of filling the role of Pulver is left to Robert Walker, Jr., and while he doesn't do too badly in the role, he could never get near Lemmon in comedic timing and charisma. In the role played so gruffly but well by James Cagney originally, we instead get Burl Ives, who has a couple of nice moments, but is really miscast in the part. (Strangely, the film no longer has Lemmon, but his future partner and pal Walter Matthau shows up in the role of the ship's doctor.) The chief failing of the second film is that there is no reliable replacement for the vacated position that Roberts left on the ship at the first film's close. In the original, Pulver's antics shine because he is secondary to the plot for much of the way; here, with his resourceful but still fairly wacky character taking over for Roberts, Pulver seems to retreat in a childish way, and you realize just how much Mister Roberts relied on Henry Fonda as the title character to provide a strong moral center. Enjoyable in parts, but overall, a misfire. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

Action in Arabia (1944) Dir.: Léonide Moguy – About fifteen minutes into Action in Arabia, I became completely convinced that the film was meant to be RKO's answer to Warner Bros.' Casablanca. After all, you have the World War II period, a mysterious foreign setting dripping with possibilities (Damascus, not actually a part of the Arabian Peninsula, but really in Western Asia), a calm, cool lead who might turn out to be something more than he seems (George Sanders), a cool blonde (Virginia Bruce, playing a super spy) who is bound to get romantically involved with the hero, Nazis running amok and trying to control the area, and the film even opens with a map of North Africa which comes accompanied by narration by Lou Marcelle (who performed the same function for Casablanca). Of course, the results are not nearly as dramatically satisfying or well-filmed as the Michael Curtiz classic, but that is not to say that Action in Arabia is not a ball of fun all its own. A marvelous supporting role by Robert (King Kong) Armstrong is my favorite in the film besides the always reliable Sanders, but there are also stellar turns by Batman '66's Alan Napier as the cruel, conniving villain and Gene Lockhart as a sniveling, constantly shifting smuggler. Some of the action takes the film nearly into serial territory, and the tone of the film shifts from murder mystery to spy thriller to action film with the slightest nudge. It's all completely escapist, and has nowhere near the soul of the film it emulates at first, but man is it entertaining. Can't wait for a second go at it in the future. – TC4P Rating: 6/9

Blue Crush 2 (2011) Dir.: Mike Elliott – I will fully admit that while I watched this film under the guise of doing research for my blog, The Shark Film Office, there was also a part of me that said "I don't mind spending a couple of hours this afternoon watching attractive girls going surfing... nope, not one bit." While the original 2002 Blue Crush starring Kate Bosworth had nothing in the way of even a mention about sharks, I still had hopes that there might at least be some dialogue about the creatures in the followup, and it was completely because the second film relocates to South Africa. (It's an easy thing to pull off since the newer film has completely new characters and has no other relation to the first film except the two words in its title.) The plot is so old hat as to be nauseating: pampered, blond L.A. teenager whose surfer girl mommy died of cancer years earlier gets tired of her dad being a non-presence in her life and runs away to South Africa on her own to get his attention. She meets a local girl, has all her swag stolen by thugs, and joins her new friend in her communal living shack with a bunch of dirty surf hippies beside the ocean.  They run afoul of the law and the gangs, but everything rides on the blond girl getting a chance to recreate her mom's S.A. surf trip from before she was born. There is some quick talk of the girls getting thrown to the sharks by the thugs, but that is it for toothy menace. Lots of pretty but fairly tepid surf scenes, a zillion cute girls in bikinis (hottest of all being Sharni Vinson a couple of years before she played the tough girl lead in Adam Wingard's You're Next), and a wholly unbelievable but completely predictable storyline. – TC4P Rating: 5/9

Rolling Thunder (1977) Dir.: John Flynn – There is a very good reason why Quentin Tarantino is not only very high on this film as one of the cornerstones of his movie philosophy, but that he also named a production company after it. There are plenty of examples of revenge action flicks from the 1970s, and I will not fault your opinion if you prefer Death Wish or another film in its place, but Rolling Thunder is arguably one of the better crafted examples of the genre in that period. It certainly has plenty within it that sticks in your mind far beyond a single showing, including the hard-edged, unwavering conviction in the lead role of star William Devane. I grew up with a lingering impression of Devane as John F. Kennedy in The Missiles of October, but my mind would have reeled had I seen this film when it was released and I was only 12/13 years of age. A vet returns home from Vietnam after being a prison camp for seven years, his wife and child are murdered and his hand is cut off, he enlists the aid of his best friend from the service (a young Tommy Lee Jones) and his new girlfriend to track down the gang of killers with a hook on his hand, a loaded shotgun, and one seriously bad attitude. I saw the film on cable ages ago, and then promptly set it aside. Seeing it again recently awakened a flood of memories of what a riveting performance Devane gives and his resulting path of ultra-violence that leaves the viewer both cheering and rattled at the same time. A must for action fans. – TC4P Rating: 8/9