Reviews of Classic Film, with artwork and news
LAST UPDATE September 7, 2024
Fast review: Jackpot - 2024: Action/comedy film that features a hero and heroine on the run through the mean streets of Los Angeles, pursued by zombies... wait, that's not right, pursued by greed-mad fellow Los Angelenos who are playing a lethal game called "Jackpot."
A "lottery-winner" (star Awkwafina) unexpectedly wins a gigantic money reward, and inflation being what it is that's $3.6 billion in this iteration, still a mighty sum in this future-setting of 2030, but there's a huge catch: you can only collect your winnings if you survive long enough to do so. At this future date in sunny California it is legal to murder the winner and receive the money instead, but you must obey the simple rules which seems to mean "no guns." Hurled objects, and especially knives, are quite alright, as are fists and strangling.
Jackpot is a comedy with a grotesquely brutal premise that only barely explores the pop culture genre of ultra-violence to which it clearly belongs (with a swerve through the obvious link to Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery) but Jackpot operates without any self-awareness of these things except for some mugging at the camera.
The stunt-work is impressive and abundant but the plot is threadbare and what story elements there are to justify the characters (as played by John Cena and Awkwafina) are sparingly dished out as the violent, though comedic, confrontations multiply in a bizarre Three Stooges sort of reality where inventive ways to perform bodily harm are practiced but the impact of the physicality is not typically represented in wounds or a body count afterward. This is of course an easy face-saving way to avoid any meditation on death or even murder, since it is generally no more real in Jackpot than the death of a character in a video game.
Each stereotype of society: moms, old people, police, workmen, and especially fame-seeking amateur actors, are lampooned as money-obsessed would-be murderers, and so there's a lot of satire to be had, there's just precious little story to hang these paper dolls on. There are a few breathers along the way, but the tempo of the chase is what really propels the tale and though the cast is using every possible vulgarism in popular usage in order to salt and pepper the dialogue, only the stunt work is very clever and it seems at the end we're to understand murder is funny and money, as a goal that is pooh-poohed by the main two characters, is still the key to happiness and the underlying nihilism isn't intended but the story can't help itself but be drenched in it, well, that and all the killing.
The British "Carry On" women are aging
Article at UK Guardian on the actresses that were cast in the long-running "Carry On" films of the late 1950s into the 1970s.
I interviewed five women who were in Carry On films. Not for any particular reason, but simply because we realized they would now be in their 70s, 80s, 90s … "Or dead. Or dead, darling, or still dead," says Amanda Barrie, who was in Carry on Cabby and Carry on Cleo (as Cleopatra herself). She’s 88 and still very much alive. But she’s right. Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor? All gone. I saw Leon at home in Chiswick and Jacki Piper at her home a few miles up the Thames in Teddington, with a plate of chocolate-covered ginger biscuits. Barrie, Patricia Franklin and Sheila Hancock I spoke to on the phone..."
The "Carry On" series numbers 31 films in total, the first film, Carry On Sergeant, was released in 1958, and the final film, Carry On Columbus, came out in 1992. The series frequently used parody of various film genres for their farcical stories, from historical epics to spy thrillers.
Not everyone was a fan, though. Barrie was offered further Carry Ons after Cleo. "But my agent said: ‘You’re not doing that – you’re going to Bristol Old Vic.’" Franklin agrees there was a snobbery towards them and that they were looked down on. "At a family thing, someone might say: ‘Patricia is in a Carry On,’ and a lot of people would say: ‘Oh, I’m not interested in Carry Ons.’ But then others were absolutely mad about it. I was in a play at the National with Anthony Hopkins and he said he loved the Carry Ons and had always wanted to be in one."
Fast Review: Surf Party - 1964
"Where'd you surf in Phoenix? On a sand dune?" – Richard Crane as Sgt. Wayne Neal
American "beach movies" are usually happy affairs with goofy characters and humorous situations abounding, mixed in with frolicking young people in swimwear getting a lot of exercise. The films are almost always taking place in colorful southern California with a main co-starring role belonging to the Pacific coastline rolling in one frothy tall wave after another amid a rock and roll sound track. Surf Party has all of this, to a point, but director Maury Dexter gives us a black and white film with a lot of tension that comes about because, like the titular character in the film that sparked the beach movie cycle, Gidget (1959), an outsider intrudes upon the regimented and insular sub-culture of surfing does-and-don'ts and causes an uproar, and in Surf Party it is three young women from Phoenix.
The three arrive with a small camper in tow (which incredibly becomes much larger when we view interior scenes) all determined to become surfers and looking for an instructor. Right off they run into no-nonsense police sergeant Wayne Neal (Robert Crane) in full suit and tie, on the beach, who has a bit of a bias against all surfers, and drops a small tidbit of jaded dialogue wishing the whole sport was illegal. He provides the girls with a few questions and warns them against sleeping overnight on the beach. The girls actually know this already, tipped off by local surf shop owner (Bobby Vinton) who they return to for help in learning on how to ride the waves. Their schooling gives us actual teaching and explanations about "rails" and not using the board certain ways because it will lead to knobs developing on your knees. In this way, Surf Party is taking its subject much more seriously than most beach films which seemed to be undecided whether the sport was worthwhile or simply the domain of idiots and social drop-outs.
In the much later beach movie Lifeguard (1976), the whole concept of beach culture is questioned, and the matter shows up in a simpler format in Surf Party, mirroring the earlier Gidget yet again. Can a person pursue a beach lifestyle and still be a functioning, mature adult? The idea gets put through its paces in the script for Surf Party by Harry Spaulding, but there's not a lot of surprises here because we know reality is beaming down hard on the bikinis and surfboards, and the eventual answer is obvious (though the Sam Elliott Lifeguard does develop the answer into a more sensible and charitable way while staying more or less true to the template laid down by Gidget).
In the 1991 Point Break, the issue is dealt with again but in a broader way in which authority itself is questioned when up against beach culture and the desire for freedom, and like Gidget, Surf Party, and Lifeguard, it finds a way to compromise through the contradictions and end with sand still in the toes of the stars. In Surf Party, though, the three girls, who were not running away from life but simply needed to learn to surf, they reach the end credits still whole (something we can't say about all the male leads) but now equipped with wave mastery.
Germany honours Marlene Dietrich and other women who resisted Nazi tyranny – UK The Times
The exhibition also features Marlene Dietrich, the film star who emigrated to the US in 1930 and became involved in helping German Jews and politically persecuted people who had fled in 1933. In 1937 she rejected Hitler’s offer to return to Germany and applied for US citizenship, which she was granted in 1939. After the US joined the war in 1941 she performed for US soldiers and German prisoners of war in North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium and Germany. After 1945 she was defamed in Germany as a "traitor".
Fast Reviews: Good Neighbor Sam (1964): Secret identities and mistaken identities were part and parcel of many a classic era screwball film, and the 1964 Good Neighbor Sam featuring Jack Lemmon is a revival of the concept but with some aspects that could never have survived the Breen era of censorship.
More about Good Neighbor Sam, 1964
Fast review: Bad Boys Ride or Die 2024 – One of the themes of modern action films of the 21st century is "forgotten sons" in which a mature, adult man is forced by a story line to remember he has fathered children and now circumstances require him to rise to the occasion and deal with the matter. Eventually, both some sort of emotional intimacy with the kid (who is in trouble) and some kind of overt physical action in which the father performs a deed that compensates in some fashion for years of absence and alienation will prove his true emotional investment in the child. There's a wistful "what could have been" angle to the tale, but not big enough to really cast doubt on the happy ending.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are a good comedy team and in between the jokes they set up some pretty involved stunt work as they battle a conspiracy of lies against their now departed "father figure" of police Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) and a threatening range of threats building up from both feds and criminals. Bad Boys Ride or Die has a complicated series of clues to solve, of course, but also a lot of Florida scenery and a wide cast of characters making up it's "family." In between the fighting and a final confrontation at an abandoned coastline theme park featuring a large albino alligator, the main thing we get is the dominant value of family for a "grown ass man" and the need to kill vicious criminals.
Shelley Duvall 1949–2024
Fast Reviews:
Central Intelligence 2016: The "Rock" (Dwayne Johnson) wears a fanny-pack, a My Little Pony tee and is an unstoppable secret agent who reconnects to hisold high school hero Golden Jet (Kevin Hart) while simultaneously undermining a conspiracy of double agent activity that could lead to worldwide disaster.
The film depends heavily upon the visual of a rather diminutive Kevin Hart compared on screen with the enormous Dwayne Johnson (in this way it's a faint echo of older films like the Schwarzenegger/DeVito Twins of 1988), and the humor in Central Intelligence (script and story by Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen, Rawson Marshall Thurber) mines that (plus the flashback "fat" jokes from the high school years of the characters) with a certain level of off-the-cuff funniness while trying to stay on the legal side of political correctness about body humor - - no small task in the 21st century. Joking aside (which is half the film) the other half is the impossible deeds of the heroes against intelligence agents of the United States who are not necessarily on the side of the United States. In between is the story of "Golden Jet" having to face that his high school years were apparently the high point of his life and he now drudges away through a career as an accountant with extremely lowered expectations... that is until Dwayne Johnson shows up and turns his world upside down.
Action film-comedy hybrids can sometimes have a tough time balancing the matter of whether we have tension about the heroics and the evil of the dangerous bad guys while also being instructed by the film to laugh it all off as the jokes around the explosions and bullets fly. Central Intelligence gets more from the humor and tension from the simple question of who is and who isn't the "rogue agent." The feats of prowess in fighting, shooting, dodging bullets and surviving the violence constantly being directed at our heroes isn't so much our worry over their making it out alive instead more like the basic question of a detective story: in what clever way will they do it, since we know they will, the threat of destruction just not strong enough. At its most effective, Central Intelligence is a well polished comedy with an excellent display of stunt work.
Literally the worst take on classic film, EVER. They were real people who created magic and we were lucky to have them.
— 𝔻𝕖𝕓𝕠𝕣𝕒𝕙 🥃🖊️ (@DADiClementi) June 30, 2024
It was finite.
And true.
And real.
And therefore, perfect.
And it’s over. https://t.co/wvoItdR7uz pic.twitter.com/4cinTgFelk
Fast Review: Eyes in the Night - 1942. Edward Arnold is one of the great "shouters" in classic Hollywood, able to wield belligerent but sharp dialogue at a high decibel, often accompanied by arm and face gesticulations that makes everyone else in the cast look like they're not moving (or small, Arnold himself was 5'10").
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Fast Review The Beekeeper – 2024: Depicting bad governments doing bad things has been a genre of cinema since the 1970's when real gov't scandals overwhelmed the news and made the topic not as controversial as it had been (when Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premiered in 1939 it was pooh-poohed by a number of Senators and Congressmen for its depiction of high-level corruption as being too fantastic, a notionMore about The Beekeeper, 2024
UK's Powerhouse Films releasing four classic film disks in September:
You and Me (1938) 2K restoration, film by Fritz Lang Powerhouse page
When Tomorrow Comes (1939) 2K restoration, film by John Stahl with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer Powerhouse Page
You'll Never Get Rich (1941) High Definition remaster, film by Sidney Lanfield, with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth Powerhouse Page
The Lady is Willing (1942) High Definition remaster, film by Mitchell Leisen, with Fred MacMurray, Marlene Dietrich and "Corey the Wonder Baby," Powerhouse Page
Donald Sutherland has died
Donald Sutherland 1935–2024
Canadian actor Donald Sutherland's career spanned six decades, beginning with his roles in classic films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967) and MASH (1970). He was often praised for his ability to seamlessly transition between genres, for example Don't Look Now (1973), Ordinary People (1980), and his more recent roles in blockbuster franchises like The Hunger Games series. Sutherland was given an Honorary Oscar in 2017.
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The 1984 quasi-punk sci-fi mystery film Repo Man is coming out on Criterion Blu-Ray disc (4K digital restoration, approved by director Alex Cox, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack – one 4K UHD disc and one Blu-ray disc) in September. The Criterion page about their HD edition.
Fast Review: Cactus Flower – 1969
At the start of Cactus Flower, a prone Goldie Hawn is on her couch as her tiny apartment fills with gas from her tiny oven. Like a sacrifice to a shrine she positions herself with arms crossed below a large framed photo of Walter Matthau, who has just broken a dinner-date with her, and she lays still and breathes in the killing fumes. Her suicide goes awry when her neighbor, unsuccessful playwright Julian (played by Rick Lenz), sniffs the gas out in the hall, and unable to get through the door, smashes out one of her windows to climb in and turn the gas off. He then administers mouth-to-mouth respiration to the passed-out young woman which turns into a heated kissing session until Hawn's character snaps awake, realizing these aren't middle-aged Walter Matthau lips!
More about Cactus Flower – 1969
Columbia 100 Anniversary will have Lawrence of Arabia and Close Encounters of the Third Kind returning to movie theaters. Also, Rear Window will be in Theaters, too, as part of that film's 70th anniversary.
Fast Review: The Maze – 1953
As a mystery/horror film, The Maze digs right into a 1953 obsession, that of evolution gone wrong, but it is combined with a Gothic "haunted house" story about how to keep a dark family secret very secret for literally hundreds of years (though they keep a copy of a book titled Teratology laying around in the open).
More about the film The Maze – 1953
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