peteg's blog

Barnacle Bill (1957)

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Another of the Ealing comedies (a minor one) and more Alec Guinness completism. It's a paint-by-the-numbers farce in black-and-white that passes the time amiably but unimaginatively. The permanently seasick star wins us over by playing the little man sticking the big sea laws to the self-dealing local council. There are young people doing their thing to what was progressive music at the time. It's a bit disappointing when set against the earlier Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Spellbound

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It took me a few goes to get past the initial hokey crap, and it does improve, as you'd expect from Hitchcock. "Human glacier" yet forever coquettish Ingrid Bergman gets constantly slavered over in what would now solicit endless #metoos; she's good but it's a disappointing role after her timeless efforts in Casablanca, Notorious, and so forth. I don't remember Gergory Peck at all; I haven't seen To Kill a Mockingbird since school. The 1945 psychobabble, even in black-and-white, is always too much. Just maybe you could count this as a dry run for Psycho. There's a Dali dream sequence.

Make Way for Tomorrow

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Another of Roger Ebert's great movies (2010): "It's so tough it might not be filmable today, when even Alzheimer's stories have happy endings." Black-and-white, 1937. It's a story of an aged couple and their five children. There's a lot to enjoy in Beulah Bondi's performance; away from her things get more formulaic and sentimental.

Elliot Ackerman: Red Dress in Black and White.

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Kindle. This is the weakest from Ackerman I've read yet. It's nothing like his earlier work, except perhaps in the prose being even more pedestrian. I guess he read a book from the first Cold War and figured that we needed an Our Man in Constantinople or The artist who didn't come in from the cold. The city and its subcultures provide only local colour; the only rounded-out character here is Murat, and that's because he's a two dimensional, non-violent Michael Corleone-esque business guy. Plot-wise Ackerman thinks he's got it figured out like Smiley would, but it wouldn't take much imagination for Cat to return home at any point to fetch her and her son's passports; she could depart for the USA while her husband is out one day, and I doubt the embassy could interfere much. The reveal at the end is entirely predictable given the concussive repetition and closededness of what comes before.

Joan Silber talks it up. Perhaps this shadowboxing is something for Americans to wring their hands over.

The Good the Bad the Weird

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One more Kim Jee-woon after I swore I would stop. This is a Korean Western, faithfully cloned from the spaghettis right down to the faux Morricone score and negative space portraits; not quite Once Upon a Time in Manchuria but maybe next time. Song Kang-ho leads as the Weird/Tuco in John Lennon glasses. He spends a fair bit of time on what I took to be a Ural (with sidecar); there are also horses, trains and the iconic three-way shootout. The Civil War is instead one between the Korean independents and the occupying Japs; more fun would've been had if they'd had Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes pour across the plains in some anachronistic fantasy. The thin plot is delivered with a nod and wink — this is a bloodless PG-rated matinee special after all. The one innovation — spaghetti cinematography — doesn't help. It's a bit Shanghai Noon and as usual the whole thing hinges on how much you enjoy Song's mumbling and stumbling.

Mike Hale was disappointed despite his professed belief in Song's ability to lift any material.

Robert Perisic: No-Signal Area.

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Even pointlessness looks better when it's finished.

Kindle. A pointer from Ken Kalfus. Translated Croatian. The premise — of building an obsolete turbine in a factory last functional in the days of Communism — seemed adequately kooky. The bulk however is a series of portraits of people making their way through the days after the end of history. There's a bit of everything, but nothing dug too deeply. The humour is great. The rambling inner monologues are trying. When it comes the turn away from industrialism is handled well. The problem is that it takes so long.

Yourself and Yours

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A pointer from Glenn Kenny. Directed by Hong Sang-soo, 2016. It's in a similar style to The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well I guess: sleepy, a bit Todd Solondz, momentarily transiently humourless Mike Leigh, all the time playing Lynchian identity games ala Lost Highway without the violence or video clip. An object of desire is used to explore alcoholism in Seoul. Yeah. I was more interested in what they were eating.

I Saw the Devil

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A graphically violent Korean effort from 2010. It's a proforma and soulless stock revenge sort of thing: a secret agent plays cat-and-mouse with a cartoonish serial killer. Everything is coated in blood but not in a way I'd consider cinematic. Oldboy Choi Min-sik looks tired throughout but still does better than invincible cardboard lead Lee Byung-hun. I don't know why it's rated so highly at IMDB. Another directed by Kim Jee-woon.

Jeannette Catsoulis observed the excess misogyny at the time.

Clockers (1995)

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A pointer from A. O. Scott's recent "essential" Spike Lee list. It's the mid 1990s and Rudy's on the throne of NYC while we're dealing drugs in a park in Brooklyn. Harvey Keitel is still riding high off the back of Pulp Fiction; with Scorcese as producer we can expect a bit of Mean Streets with black people subbed in for Italians. Keitel plays Keitel playing a NYPD detective. Pre-Jesus John Turturro is his partner; he doesn't get to unleash his histrionics. "Clockers" is supposed to neologise a particular subtribe of dealers: they're at it "around the clock". Mekhi Phifer has his moments in the lead. The scheming menace of Don Delroy Lindo is more persuasive. Things unravel as you might expect. Overall it's something of a dry run for the superior 25th Hour.

Roger Ebert found depths that just aren't there. Janet Maslin. To her Keitel has "great improvisatory naturalness"; to me he's always Keitel. The cinematography is pretty good though, with the odd directorial flourish.

Fences

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This made a big splash in late 2016 and has been on the pile since then. I've tried watching it a few times but couldn't get past the incredibly wordy introduction; this time, with subtitles, I made it to the end in three sittings. The draw was Denzel Washington directing and in the lead. It goes about how you'd expect: a blowhard's special pleading for self indulgence on the basis of his righteous sacrifices for his family. This may have been novel in the 1950s but is all we hear now. There's too much baseball, and too much fumbled nuance. Viola Davis got an Oscar in support; she's often solid and often overemoting. I vaguely remembered Jovan Adepo's dial from the Watchmen TV series. Overall it felt like a predictable, stagy Southern Gothic with too many monologues that didn't transition well from the theatre to film. Too much and not enough.

A. O. Scott. Dana Stevens. She's right, the cinematography is a bit garbage.