But they are showing most of his extant silent films and the bulk of his early British sound films, and that is where I really need to do a bit of catching up, as it were. Of his silents, the only one that I have ever watched all the way through is his breakthrough in 1927 with The Lodger, his tale of a Jack the Ripper type on the loose and the suspicions of the denizens of a boarding house over whether an odd man staying there might be the suspect. I am really excited to see the films just before The Lodger to see just where the Hitchcock style truly got going; The Lodger definitely shows him to already have developed some of the weapons in his arsenal, though he was still just under a decade away from his first great period, and he really hadn't truly settled on the thriller as his primary canvas.In the meantime, I did finish going through the films from the Western course, which I wanted to get out of the way before I began the Hitchcock thing this week. Within this time, though outside of the course's range of interest, I watched two more John Wayne films I had not recorded yet as having seen: The Comancheros (1961) and The Undefeated (1969).
Let me restate that: I thought that I had not seen either one before, but in watching each one, I am not so sure now. Seeing Stuart Whitman's Southern gentleman in the first film, and the quite similar role played by Rock Hudson in the second, both men sparked recognition in my soul. Entire scenes seemed to trigger a sense of deja vu in my mind whenever they were on screen, and I am now pretty certain I must have encountered both films in my childhood. I have said before that it is unusual for me not to remember a film that I saw in my youth, as I am crazily connected to cinema as my chief means of true escape from the world. However, I did not really come fully into that sense until I was around thirteen or so, and I also did not really start paying attention to the western as a genre of interest for myself until even later. I remember numerous Wayne westerns fondly from those days, but these two were apparently not amongst them. However, since I pretty much enjoyed both films equally and felt that pull of recognition, now I am not so sure. There must be more cinema buried in my head from that time than I first thought.The Numbers:
This week's feature-length film count: 21; 14 first-time viewings and 7 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: Fort Apache (1948) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature film: Jem and the Holograms (2015) – 4/9
Average films per day in June so far: 3.10
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.05
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen per day: 198
The Reviews:
Jem and the Holograms (2015) Dir.: John M. Chu – Am I wasting my time even writing about this film? Probably. Most people aren't going to bother trying to watch it, and honestly, except for the fact that I was passing by HBO one day and ran into it just as it started, I most likely would have never even though about it. But I do remember the cartoon show from the '80s, even if I only saw it once or twice, and so I did have a passing interest in wondering how they would adapt it for today. I needn't have bothered. This film is not the cartoon show at all. Sure, there is still a story about an up and coming pop-rock band, but most of the sci-fi trappings from the show, where the lead singer wears a pair of earrings that connect to a robot that creates a holographic persona that disguises her true self from the public, are missing here. There is still a really stupid robot, but all he does is trigger... a scavenger hunt! And there is a mystery in the film, but all it does is lead to... a pair of earrings that her dad left her but which never set off a helpful disguising hologram. If the film is just setting us up for a sequel where the original concept from the toy-selling show is actually used, it pays terrible service to it by, at the very least, ending with those elements fully in play. It's a shame, because the film does have some true style to it in the costuming and the cinematography, and the dramatic parts were actually played fairly well by the mostly young cast. Even Juliette Lewis is kind of fun in the evil manager role of Erica Raymond (the original character was named Eric), but wasted by film's end. I also didn't mind some of the music even most of it was fairly rote. I know the show was pretty much junk but it has some devoted fans, and I am sorry they weren't treated better by this film. – TC4P Rating: 4/9
Eat That Question is going to allow you to fully understand Zappa far less than owning more than 90 albums of the man's work (as I do) is going to allow for closure, but it will give you a sense of Zappa's place in entertainment and the culture of his time. It consists mainly of news clips, film clips, videos, slices of interviews and live performances, and other various Zappa ephemera, all arranged in mostly chronological order to allow for historical context. It carries right up to his death in 1993 from prostate cancer. The documentary, however unintentional, all ties in perfectly with Zappa's "conceptual continuity," where each element of his music and art, and even outside interviews, were as integral to his overall narrative as the rest. Most of his albums are each connected to the rest by recurring motifs, self-referential in-jokes, and connecting musical phrases or call-outs to previous material. Obscure characters from far older songs may suddenly burst back to life in the middle of an unrelated piece, as if dropping by for tea. Even watching many of these old clips brings his music to life – especially to a long-time fan – which is further proof that as long as the man's legend continues to bring fascination (there are numerous Zappa docs already), his music will never die. (However much his son Ahmet wants to chain it up... sorry, taking Dweezil's
side in that battle...) – TC4P Rating: 8/9
Morgan (2016) Dir.: Luke Scott – Forgive me if I kept flashing on the superior techno-horror flick Splice from a few years back while watching Morgan. Once again, we have a genetic engineering company operating in a highly creepy fashion in a remote lab with human hybrids that age rapidly, when one of their experiments not only goes well beyond what they had envisioned, but also escapes. Unlike Splice, things are kept mostly at the human level here as far as mutations are concerned... well, human-looking but definitely super-powered. No wings sprouting out of the back here. Kate Mara plays a risk management specialist tasked with keeping things under wraps when things start to get out of hand at the lab (pre-escape) and with tracking down the hybrid girl afterward. The real remoteness of the lab surrounded by forest (filmed in Northern Island) also brings to mind some similar scenes in Ex Machina (Norway, standing in for my home state of Alaska in that one), though the intellectual head games of the latter film are not to be found here in Morgan, which survives mainly on pure action. There is a big twist in the plot here, which I will not reveal, but it somehow came off as being both pretty obvious and weirdly satisfying at the same time. Not sure how it happened, but it ended up being my favorite part of the film. Apart from that though, while Mara is good in her role, the film is just OK. And now all I want to do is watch Splice again. – TC4P Rating: 5/9
Lawman (1971) Dir.: Michael Winner – This is yet another film that I am fairly certain I must have seen at some point in my childhood. It's not that I remember any scenes from it, but I was a big Burt Lancaster fan in my youth, and watched nearly anything he was in when I crossed its path. And the image of Lancaster as the aging bounty hunter who enters a small western town intent on bringing to justice a murderous gang of locals certainly registers with my catalogue of remembered images in my mind. He will not be swayed by his task – not by bribery, threats, gunfire, or the fact that his ex-lover is currently involved with one of the gang – and in the usual manner of these affairs, very few in the town are willing to lend even casual assistance to him, thinking more of themselves than of the common good. Lancaster is as tough as usual here, if not a little more one-note than I would prefer, and he has a terrific supporting cast behind him: Robert Ryan, Robert Duvall, Albert Salmi, Lee J. Cobb, John Hillerman, Sheree North, Joseph Wiseman, John Beck, Ralph Waite, and in his very first big screen role, Richard "Logan's Run" Jordan. Director Michael Winner would make a western the following year with Charles Bronson called Chato's Land, and then Winner and Bronson would move to the present day with the original The Mechanic. Both were three years away from making their biggest splash with the all-time, bona fide revenge classic, Death Wish. While it is easy to use hindsight to make connections that may or may not have been intentional, it is not hard while watching Lawman to squint a little bit – to eliminate the genre trappings of the western – and see the same style of tough guy in those films captured here on the screen with Lancaster. Lawman didn't pay off as much as I had hoped, which might be why it didn't stick with me if indeed I did see it as a kid, but it is still a strong enough '70s western to warrant a second look... if it wasn't my second one already. – TC4P Rating: 6/9
You Get Me (2017) Dir.: Brent Bonacorso – Oh, the dangers of trying to keep up – even ever so briefly – with the latest original films on Netflix. Sometimes, the results are just dandy, but more often, as it is with all things, you end having dabbled in the mediocre for 90 minutes. So, bright and early one morning, looking for a relatively short film to fill a gap in time, I went with You Get Me. I will admit that I chose You Get Me solely because the poster had a pretty girl in a blue bikini floating in a swimming pool on it. (Blue, especially in lighter tones, is a trigger color for me.) So, yeah... you can call me a perv. I let my guard down and I paid for it. In the film, a dopey high school senior breaks up with his girlfriend (Halston Sage) at a party, gets really drunk, and then leaves the party with a hottie (Bella Thorne, kind of an "it" girl right now). From there, it is nothing more than Fatal Attraction with millennial teens (and sans boiled bunny, thankfully). The girls are cute but bland, the boys are the usual dopes that boys are, every succeeding plot twinge is ever more unbelievable, and my interest wore off after the swimming pool scene. If things with both the girls and the movie had gone more into the area of Wild Things (a far better if not equally unbelievable film), then I might have forgiven You Get Me. And I learned that just because Netflix has a new original film on there every fourteen minutes, I don't need to pursue watching all of them. – TC4P Rating: 5/9
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