Coup de Grâce (1976)

Serious Movie time! And you can't get anymore serious than a black and white German movie from the seventies, directed by Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) and staring his then-wife and fellow director Margarethe von Trotta (Marianne and Juliane).

This film is stark and dark tale set in eastern Europe right after World War One, as German troops battle Soviet Guerrillas during the Russian Civil. This being a Serious Movie, there are suppressed and expressed passions, stuff breaking, people dying, gorgeous visuals and snow.

It's also a rare time to see a woman smoke a pipe. Pipes are like cigars; one's so used to seeing men use the phallic things that it's an utter shock when a woman does it. An old Roma woman in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) smoked one, but other than that, my mind is drawing a blank when it comes to other examples of cinematic women using this handy signifier of wisdom.

But back to Coup de Grâce: it's very dreary, but very rewarding, in the way good Serious Movies are: compelling, nice on the eyes, and stimulating to the brain.

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?

Deathdream (1972)

Deathdream is an effective little metaphor about the Vietnam war, and the trauma it bought to families and veterans, wrapped in a gory reworking of "The Monkey's Paw" with a body count.

Even without the addition of the Tom Savini's creeptastic makeup, lead actor Richard Backus, playing the solider who returns home quite changed, is quite off-putting. He has this uncanny valley face, the type that reminds one of a Ken doll brought to life. In that respect, he reminds a lot of Keir Dullea, whose strangely molded features and slightly off-putting demeanor were put such good use in Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Deathdream director Bob Clark's following feature, the unnerving prototypical slasher Black Christmas (1974). Funnily enough, according to Backus' wikipedia page, he was Dullea's understudy during the original Broadway run of Butterflies are Free. Having difficulty imagining either man playing genuinely nice, non-threatening individuals, but I guess that's acting for ya.

ANYWHO, interesting movie, recommend you check it out if you want a unique and surprisingly moving zombie movie.

Alexander the Great (1956)

In the otherwise sloggy and unmemorable biopic Alexander the Great, which I saw about a year ago, and staring everyone's favorite glowering Welshman Richard Burton (who, according to Look Back in Anger (1959), "knows what it's like to be angry. ANGRY!"), two moments remain stuck in my mind:

1. The scene where a very bearded Fredric March, playing Alexander's dad Philip, does a drunken dance on a hill overlooking the camp.

2. The part where Buuuurton gets into a brief kurfuffle with fellow Welsh actor Stanley Baker. Later, the two would be kinda sorta reunited in the top-notch Zulu (1964), with Baker staring and Burton providing narration.

Other than that, the rest of the movie completely escapes my memory. Except Burton's blonde wig; that thing was the one truly golden object in a nearly 2 1/2 hour checklist of Important Moments in Alexander's Life. Almost makes me want to check out Oliver Stone's lambasted attempt to frame this grandiose historical figure, for comparison's sake. Almost.

The Danish Girl (2015) / Man on Wire (2008)

The Danish Girl

There was a lot of crying in this movie. I've never seen so many wet eyes, courtesy of leads Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander. Both give very impressive teary performances, with Vikander being a particular stand out; that might be due to the stunning mascara trails she's able leave during one very moist confrontation with Redmayne.

Man on Wire

I wonder if anyone attempted a double feature of this and The Walk (2015).  Both contain reenactments of the same event, and cover roughly the same time span. But The Walk made sure that Joseph Gordon-Levitt got some humbling, and Man on Wire is satisfied enough to document an extraordinary event, no lesson needed.

Lola Montès (1955) & Dr. No (1962)

Lola Montès is a biopic about the titular 19th century Courtesan, a living prop in a circus show about her life. Throughout the show, during the Ring Master's (the always dynamic Peter Ustinov) exposition, Lola (Martine Carol) flashbacks to her past life and loves, when things where easier, the cigars plentiful, and her lovers rich, famous, and easy to break up with.

This movie is crazy colorful, with vivid reds, blues, and yellows that you just don't seen any more on film, and expensively elaborate, with puffy costumes fringed with sequins and a carriage big enough to hold a piano. I don't see why critics are so disdainful towards Ms. Carol; I thought she was fine, not great, mind you, but perfectly fine; she didn't stand out as being particularly dull or flagrantly artificial, like the worst actresses I've seen. The other actors were admittedly superior, especially Anton Walbrook--always nice to see him play a nice guy, in this case King Leopold I of Bavaria. Jules (Oskar Werner) from Jules and Jim (1962) also shows up as a smitten student.

I really need to see more Ophüls movies; thus far, the only things I've seen by him are Letter From an Unknown Women (1948), Caught (1949), and La Ronde (1950). All of those are great, highly enjoyable and aesthetically jaw-dropping (well, Caught was a bit underwhelming, but it did have its moments), so this needs to be corrected. Eventually. Can't understand why this movie was originally reedited to make it more "chronological"; did the studio really think that audiences wouldn't be able to follow the plot? Then again, the similarly timeline jumping Intolerance (1916) didn't do that well financially either, and it's a hands down classic!

Now for Dr. No, where the world first saw Bond, James Bond, on screen, the big screen, that is. Technically, his debut came on TV, in an hour-long adaptation of Casino Royale (1954) on the anthology show Climax!; he was dubbed Jimmy Bond, and was American. I wonder if one can see it.

But to the point; Dr. No already sets up much of what we know and love about Bond: his fancy suits, his "shaken not stirred" dry martinis, his bedding (or boating, at one point) of multiple beautiful women, and his usage of his license to kill. Unfortunately, his fear of tarantulas were not further elaborated on. And there are no nifty gadgets here: a gun is traded in for another gun, and that's it. Good to see that the movie already offered eye candy for all the folks in the audience, with bikini babes, in addition to Bond being shirtless a lot.

It's also surprisingly brutal, for a Bond film: James bosses around women and grabs them forcefully, and when people get shot, it looks like they got dabbed with some fake blood swiped from Hammer Studios. There's also an unfortunate black stereotype (John Kitzmiller) who's afraid of dragons and ends up getting fried by the baddies.

And there's yellowface, which is unfortunately and awkwardly, a very common element in older movies. The though process must have been: "Hey, why hire an Asian when we can just hire a white dude to play one? Genius!" A quick scan of the "Examples of Yellowface" article on Wikipedia show that this tendency has continued. I know it was the early 60s, and Joseph Wiseman's subtle Dr. No is less wincing than Alec Guinness having difficulty saying "lollypop" as a Japanese widower in A Majority of One (1962).  But it's weird, and slightly disconcerting, that he Bond franchise, long may it live, has prospered because of the success of a film that has metal-handed Fu Manchu whom threatens the world with nuclear yellow terror?

And yet, I still like this movie. Because, damn it, I'm only human, and Sean Connery's Bond is so cool; even when he sang, and I got Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) flashbacks (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because Darby O'Gill is among Disney's best live action films). Plus, Jamaica locations, that gun-barrel opening, and that goddamn awesome theme song, the latter which ISN'T written by John Barry, to my disillusionment that John Barry.

Lola Montès and Dr. No are very much preoccupied with gazing: men looking at women, and women, in turn, looking at men. Because of gender dynamics, and in the tradition of fictional "loose women," Lola ends up punished for her indiscretions though, to the movie's credit, she isn't condemned for her actions; the most unsympathetic characters are those that use her for their own ends: the mother who tries to marry her off to an old rich nobleman, her cheating drunk of a husband, the Bulvarian revolutionaries who make her a scapegoat, and, ultimately, the coin-counting circus owner who exploits her fame for his financial gain. On the other hand, Bond, because he's all manly, never gets any sort of punishment or comeuppance for his numerous sexcapades. But isn't that just the way of movies in a patriarchal society?

The Desperate Hours (1955)

The Hillard's are your average suburban family, with a father (Fredric March), mother (Martha Scott), grown daughter (Mary Murphy), and young son (Richard Eyer). One day, their organized routine is disrupted when a trio of escaped convicts, led by Humphrey Bogart, invade their home and force them at gunpoint to keep their existence quite.

The movie is not that far from a horror film; you have the home invasion angle and the characters making stupid decisions that elongate their trial. However, what raises The Desperate Hours above most other films covering the same ground is its brief shocking bits of violence. There's no blood, but there are guns being used as a club, as well as breaking of glass, china, and furniture. As the criminals feel more at home, the family, particularly the patriarch, take to using more and more desperate measures to try to get them out of their house. What results is a tense, if slightly overlong, film that toys with the security that one would normally feel in suburbia, topped by stellar performances from March, Scott, Bogart, and Arthur Kennedy as the deputy sheriff put in charge of the manhunt.

What Price Hollywood? (1932)

A waitress at The Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, Mary Evans (Constance Bennett) serves the very famous and very inebriated director Max Carey (Lowell Sherman). Being a wannabe actress, Evans gets into his good graces, and he arranges for her to have a bit part in his current film. After a stalled start, this performance impresses the heads of the studio so much that they make her a star. But Hollywood has other trick up its sleeve, not all of them nice.

It's widely believe that this film was the inspiration for the original  A Star is Born (and, by default, its many remakes). It manages to stand up on its own, however, thanks to a good cast and plenty of realist behind the scenes looks at how Hollywood works. There are meetings with yes men, a wedding that gets chaotically mobbed with fans, paparazzi with flashbulbs, and of course, studio scenes, including an indoor rain shower created with sprinklers and fire hoses!

A special highlight is Sherman's performance as the director whose career goes into decline as Bennett's rises. In real life, Sherman was a director along with being an actor, so his few scenes behind the camera have a special sort of authenticity. Sherman also shares very good platonicly fond chemistry with Bennett, and is both amusing and moving as a troubled mentor who is unable to give himself the leg up that his star received on her way to success.

Lili (1953)

It's never a good sign when your "charming" love story could, with a few minor alterations, pass for horror. This is the case for Lili, which pits the distressingly naive Leslie Caron against a quartet of hand puppets that are the residents of the uncanny valley. Why she doesn't flee at first sight of these soulless  blinking creations, with their mouths moving like so many nightmare-inducing dummies, is beyond me. It doesn't help that they are controlled by Sir Blandington himself, Mel Ferrer, who continually has this wistful expression that makes it seem like he is staring out longly at a less creepy, more interesting movie nearby. Remember kids, if a guy is continually demeaning towards you, gives you the cold shoulder, and slaps you, it means that he secretly loves you.

The Italian Job (1969)

This movie is so unbeliviably cool and groovey, I can't handle it; it's just so wonderfully and enjoyably fluffy, colorful, cartoonish, and really exiting. It's a humorous heist films with one hell of a car chase involving three mini-coopers (each one a color of the Union Jack) that drive around, above and below Turin. It's also so ridiculously British, and patriotic to boot, that one wants to sing "God Save the Queen" by the end. Did I mention that it stars Michael Caine and Noel Coward? Just see it, see it now!