Z

By / / 1960s, 1969 / Leave a Comment

Costa-Gavras’ 1969 movie Z opens with a twist on the standard disclaimer: “Any similarity to real persons and events is not coincidental. It is INTENTIONAL.”

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Z (1969)

Where to watch: Just Watch

A quick search of Wikipedia turns up the story behind the film. Greek anti-war activist Grigoris Lambrakis was assassinated by two far-right extremists in 1963, as detailed in the 1967 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The event is apparently pretty much what is depicted in the film.

Costa-Gavras is best known here for his 1982 Academy Award-winning film Missing (starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek). Like Z and most of Costa-Gavras’ other films, it’s a political story involving the search for a missing journalist amid a coup d’état in Chile.

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Throne of Blood

By / / 1950s, 1957 / Leave a Comment

Everything in Akira Kurosawa‘s Throne of Blood is spot-on, as usual. The leads — Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada as the ostensible Macbeth and Lady Macbeth — are impeccable as Kurosawa blends the Shakespeare tragedy with Japanese Noh performance, with a dose of John Ford western for good measure.

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"Throne of Blood"

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It’s a tightly crafted, brilliantly acted, pared-down adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.

What more can be said about the 1957 film (or any of Kurosawa’s other 29 films, for that matter) that hasn’t been said?

So rather than re-analyze Throne of Blood, I want to ask a question I think about often as I’m watching, in particular, foreign films: How much am I missing?

In film club, most of the movies we watch were produced years ago, in other countries, and in languages other than English. We’re viewing them from a 2020s, American perspective. We’re not watching the movies in the context they were produced.

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The Cocoanuts

By / / 1920s, 1929 / Leave a Comment

It was my pick for film club. We hadn’t watched a comedy in a while, so I picked the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts.

The Cocoanuts came out in 1929, just over a year after the first all-talking movie, Lights of New York, and less than two years after the first part-talkie, The Jazz Singer. The film reworked (for better or worse) their hit Broadway show for the silver screen.

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"The Cocoanuts"

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It’s groundbreaking by being the brothers’ first feature film and for pushing the boundaries of sound. But apart from Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, I can easily do without the rest of the film. (Oh, and Zeppo, whose role is almost non-existent.)

The Cocoanuts‘ plot — a robbery scheme set at a resort during the Florida real-estate bubble of the 1920s — is a thin filament upon which the Marx Brothers’ routines and several show-stopping songs and dances are hung. And by show-stopping, I mean the show comes to a grinding halt for most of the songs and the overly long dance numbers.

The musical numbers in the brothers’ later movies — particularly when they sang them — added laughs and kept the movies moving.

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Blood Simple

By / / 1980, 1980s / Leave a Comment

I first saw Blood Simple, not at the theater, but on a 27-inch color TV from a VHS tape that I’d rented. After watching Raising Arizona, I wanted to check out Joel and Ethan Coen’s first film (and back then, that was the way to do it).

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Blood Simple

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At first, it’s a textbook film-noir plot: A Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) hires a private detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill his wife (Frances McDormand) and the bartender (John Getz) she’s been stepping out with. But, it’s not as simple as that, of course.

I understood the term “blood-simple,” as used by the Continental Op in Dashiell Hammett’s fix-up novel Red Harvest, to mean a craziness, not necessarily limited to one person, where they think that killing is the easiest way to get what they want, without thinking of the ramifications to themselves or anyone else.

Toss in the fact that it’s not easy to kill someone as you think, and that you may not be seeing the whole picture, and it makes “blood-simple” much more complex.

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Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie

By / / 1980, 1980s, Re-Released Review / Leave a Comment

Originally published: Sept. 5, 1980

Univeral’s Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie proves that in the 1980s the outrageous 1960s humor still exists, somewhere, and is still funny.

Neither Richard “Cheech” Marin nor Tommy Chong has outgrown the “head” image; instead they have adapted it to the ’80s.

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Cheech and Chong's Next Movie

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The Cheech and Chong of the early ’70s was a parody of the hippies. Today, they portray an anachronism of two people out of place in this day and age.

A holdover from the hippy era is Cheech and Chong’s fixation on filth. With the media blaring bath and soap (“Keep yourself clean with—”; you know the type) commercials few of us even consider keeping used underclothes in the refrigerator so they won’t spoil.

The movie consists of sketches linked by a semblance of a plot. But instead of being boring, the film hits you with one comedy gag after another — Bang! Bang! Bang! It’s one of the few movies with almost no plot that is worth seeing.

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A Raisin in the Sun

By / / 1960s, 1961 / Leave a Comment

I hadn’t seen A Raisin in the Sun in decades, probably not since the 1970s or early ’80s, until we rewatched it in the film club.

A Raisin in the Sun started out as a stage play. All of the major cast members from the original Broadway production starred in the film adaptation, save for Stephen Perry who plays the young son, Travis.

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A Raisin in the Sun

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Maybe adaptation isn’t the right word.

Watching the movie is like watching a stage play rather than a film. That extends to the acting and the makeup.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great film; it just has some technical flaws.

A Raisin in the Sun, based on Lorraine Hansberry’s play, focuses on the Youngers, a multi-generational Black family, living in a south Chicago tenement, who are dealing with the death of a father and a $10,000 insurance payout.

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Kwaidan

By / / 1960s, 1965 / Leave a Comment

Had it not been our film club pick, I probably wouldn’t have watched Kwaidan. But, boy, am I glad I did — what a beautiful movie.

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Kwaidan

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The 1965 Japanese film, which takes its title from Lafcadio Hearn’s 1904 book, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, falls more into the genre of ghost stories than horror.

The movie credits open in a near-silence, periodically and startlingly broken by percussive instruments. (Warning: Don’t turn up the volume thinking it’s just a very quiet soundtrack.)

Wikipedia mentions that the film’s director, Masaki Kobayashi, went over budget and had to sell his house to complete the film. Well, you can certainly see where the money went. The sets, which appear to be entirely build on a soundstage, are lavish with intricate detail that shows up well in the pristine print streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Take the setting for the first of four stories, “The Black Hair.” As the segment opens, the home of a swordsman and his wife has seen better days, as has their marriage. He leaves his wife to find fame and fortune. As the story unfolds, the house crumbles under his feet just as his life crumbles before his eyes. The textures of both sights and sounds in the final scene are as sumptuous as they are chilling.

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Welcome to Untitled Film Project

By / / Bit Parts / Leave a Comment
Untitled Film Project

Who needs another film review site? Nobody.

But that’s not going to stop me.

As I mention in Post-Credits Scene, I have been part of an online film club for the past year, so I was already thinking about these movies. So, why not put those thoughts down in pixels?

They will require more polishing than they would as discussion points for the club. Hopefully, I can keep this up.

If I can, then you should see a new post weekly, typically Saturdays.

In addition to posts of our Criterion Channel film club picks, I’m posting movie reviews from the 1980s that I wrote or co-wrote. Those will be labeled “Re-released Reviews” just above the title, along with their original publication date.

You can read more about my love of movies in the Credits.

Just as in our film club, please feel free to express your thoughts about the movies. I just ask that you keep it civilized and non-political. Please don’t make us institute the Hays Code for comments.

Can someone refill my popcorn?