A Bigger Splash (2015)

So La Piscine (1969) got a remake. They switched the location from France to Italy, replaced Romy Schneider, Alain Delon and Maurice Ronet with Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Ralph Fiennes, and sprinkled in a killer soundtrack ranging from Verdi to The Rolling Stones. But the basic bare-bones plot remain the same: Couple A have their summer spent swimming, sunbathing, and having sex is interrupted by the arrival of couple B, consisting of an old flame and his daughter. Shenanigans ensue. Both movie hit similar plot points until the end. So if you've seen one version, you won't be surprised with the outcome of the other.

I found the original to be superfluous, but harmless. The lead actors and cinematography were gorgeous, but the movie as a whole was a rather bland affair, half-heartedly attempting to appear deeper than the soapy fluff it was. Its new iteration tries to avoid that trap by inserting flashbacks and food porn, but alas, falls into the same hole. To the movie's credit, Swinton and Fiennes are a lot of fun to watch. But I did want it to improve on the source material, instead of matching it, so I can't help but be a wee bit disappointed.

Burn! (1969)

After trying it out in the frustratingly boring Mutiny of the Bounty (1962), Marlon Brando's British accent is back in Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! Thankfully, this time it's in the service of a much better movie. After the success of The Battle of Algiers (1966), Pontecorvo takes the earlier film's exploration of guerrilla warfare used to combat colonialism, and transplants it into a story of a slave revolt, orchestrated by Brando on behalf of a British tea company, on a fictional Caribbean island in the mid-19th century. 

The result is an effective commentary on powerful nations and companies using idealogical ideas as a shield when pursuing their own interests. Brando's good, and there's a fine Morricone score. Really, the only beef I had with the movie was that, despite repeated reminders that the island has been under Portuguese control for centuries, the locals only speak Spanish!

Men Filming Women in Peril

D.W. Griffith liked filming women trapped in ambushed cabins, alongside men who see only one option left to help her,

The Lesser Evil (1912)

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913)

only to be stopped when armed reinforcements arrived. You can also see it The Birth of a Nation (1915), where the trapped southern belle just misses having her father bash her head in with a pistol butt. 

John Ford apparently played an uncredited Klansman in that movie. 14 years later, he'd film Stagecoach:

Image Source: blu-ray.com

where we get the same situation and interventionist outcome, with the uncomfortable solidification of the "men know what's best for the women folk" dynamic intact. Homage to Griffith, reuse of a suspense-raising trope, or both?

Coogan's Bluff (1968)

ie the first movie that pared Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel, a collaboration which produced some damn fine films, including Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Dirty Harry (1971). Though Coogan's feels more like a warm up to the latter, it does have some highlights:

1) Hollywood's half-assed attempt to capture the counter-culture.

Dig that pad, man! As Eastwood's Deputy Sheriff Coogan experiences it, the NYC scene consists of squeaky clean hippie guys attacking him to the sounds of bad acid rock, while young, nubile & body-painted chicks high on drugs and free love throw themselves at him.

2) The '68 fashion. My favorite is this all-red number worn by Eastwood's potential love interest Susan Clark wears at the very end. Don't have a screenshot, but believe me: everything, boots to coat, is candy-apple red.

3) A chase scene. Around Fort Tryon Park. On Motorcycles.

High-Rise (2016)

 High-Rise has style, and I'm not just referring to the spot on 70s sideburns-and-shag carpet aesthetic. It was a smart move on director Ben Wheatley and his wife, screenwriter Amy Jump's, part to make the movie adaptation of a 1975 novel a period piece, and not update it, especially since it allows to audience to focus more on grotesque satire of class divides and the Inherent Savagery Within Us, (accented by the effective contrast between gorgeous visuals and growing savage brutality), instead of being frustrated by the lack of cell-phone usage. Seen through a Kaleidoscope lens, the result is a bit pretentious, but I found the movie overall to be fascinating and disturbing, it's downbeat nature slightly levitated by a feminist-leaning ending.

Plus, if it took place today, what chance would there be to see a poster for the 1966 cult classic Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, hanging on a major character's wall? Or to hear ABBA's "SOS" as a string quartet and a Portishead cover?

The Prowler (1951)

Leave it to director Joseph Losey to bring a healthy dose of darkness to the screen.  With The Prowler, he doesn't disappoint, with a tale that makes James M. Cain look optimistic. At least in the case of the scribe's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, the murderous couples were always on the level with each other. Not in this movie.

Let me back up a bit: After Susan (Evelyn  Keyes), the wife of a disc jockey, spots a prowler peeping in on her in the shower, she naturally calls the cops to investigate. One of them, Webb (Van Heflin), takes a special interest in her. He's a bitter sort of fellow, a one-time college football champ dreaming of owning a motel court. This being a film noir, he of course has an affair with the married woman, not put off at all by her husband's convenient late-night radio gig. Nor is Webb scared off by the life insurance policy Susan's hubby happens to have.

Even in terms of the fiend-populated movies of film noir, Heflin plays one memorably unscrupulous, non-magnificent bastard. But don't feel too sorry for Susan, unassuming as she is to the true extant of her lover's monetary fixation; she quite willingly falls for his charms, partially won over by the chance to escape from her dull and constricting home life.

Though not taking place in the usual Noir habitat, replacing the dark cities and glitzy nightclubs with windy deserts and sleepy suburbs, sleaze still permeates The Prowler.The movie turns the typically melodramatic tropes (adultery, grand passion, etc) on it's head to satirize the American Dream, with a central relationship built on murder and lies, and an upcoming birth leading to a family's collapse. 

Not the most uplifting movie to come out of Hollywood, but certainly one you're not going to forget. 

Laurence Olivier Blinks...a lot

He sure does.

You only have to check out his "now is the winter" etc monologue from Richard III (1955) to know what I'm talking about:

Them's some serious blinking.

I've previously noticed those fluttering eyelashes in The Entertainer (1960), Term of Trial (1962), Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), The Beggar's Opera (1953), and The Devil's Disciple (1959).

And it's one of those quirks that, once you notice it, you can never unsee, and once you do, are always on the lookout for. Herbert Marshall's another actor who shares the same distracting habit.

But Larry O is the only performer I can think of with such a visual tick that reoccurs over multiple films; rhythmically batting his eyes as if a bit of dust flew in, and he had to wait until the camera stopped rolling before he could rub it out. 

Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Or maybe Olivier felt that rapid blinking was a good way to convey visual a character's calculating nature.

Or it's just a inconsequential thingamajig I only noticed because The Devil's Disciple was so diabolically dull, and something had to take my notice.