Does anyone actually read these? Eh, it’s a vanity blog, I’ll write what I want. *thbbthththth*
The Last Vermeer (2019)
Netflix, original English
Based on the true story of a Dutch artist (Hans Van Meegeren), in the aftermath of WWII and the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The film opens with his arrest for treason after a Vermeer was found in the collection of Hermann Goering, along with a receipt for a ridiculous amount of money. Van Meegeren insists he never betrayed the nation by selling its treasure to the occupying enemy, because the painting was a fake. The Canadian soldier from the Allied Command wants to get to the truth; the representative of the Dutch government just wants to shoot “collaborators” in the street.
Anyway, here’s the painting the real Van Meegeren painted for witnesses; I don’t care for it but I Am Not An Expert. A different composition was used in the film, and they dinked around with the timeline of events to make a more suspenseful screenplay. Strong acting from a pan-European cast, was worth the watch.
Belle Epoque (1992)
arte Mediathek, Deutsch
Young Spanish military deserter Fernando–on the cusp of their Civil War, something I don’t understand despite watching all six season of Cable Girls, lol–is taken in by a musician living in a small village, whose four daughters return from the city for the summer. One is a widow, one thinks she’s a man, one is engaged to the local schoolteacher, and one, played by Penelope Cruz, is very young and innocent. After banging each of the first three (to be fair, he was held down and raped by the trans sister), Fernando marries the youngest daughter–but not on the morning they all got dressed up and went to the church, because when they show up they find the village priest hanging in the nave, having killed himself overnight because the monarchy had been overthrown. Rape and suicide; arte labels it a comedy.
Thanks, arte! Aaaargh.
Costumes and sets were really interesting, but if this is representative of late-20th-century Spanish cinema, I don’t need it.
12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Netflix, original English
Based on a true story. Luke Wilson plays the man who invented the spread offense in football while working as a coach and teacher at an orphanage near Fort Worth, but more importantly, helped a dozen outcast and abused teens become good men.
Scenes of physical and emotional abuse by the headmaster were hard to watch, but the overall story was good and the acting was outstanding. Another good inspirational film for your jr-high or high-school team-building movie night. Stick around for the credits, several of the players go one to have impressive careers and/or military service.
Es geschah am hellichten Tag (1958)
Bayerischer Rundfunk, original Deutsch
One of my greatest fears is finding a dead body in the woods, and no one believes I am not the murderer. In the first act, this happens to a traveling knife salesman in Switzerland; he trips over the body of an 8-year-old girl, runs to town to call the police, and the locals decide to lynch him. The head inspector, Matthäi, interviews him and the victim’s best friend, and feels he’s innocent, that this is the latest work of a serial killer, but he’s leaving the job and his successor forces a false confession.
After the salesman kills himself in his cell, Matthäi sets out to investigate on his own.
He works up a psychological profile based on a drawing made by the victim with the help of a shrink friend, plots the similar unsolved murders on a map, and notes they all occurred along one road. He rents a gas station along that road, starts investigating passing drivers in cars that resemble the victim’s drawing, and eventually hires a single mother with an adorable 7-year-old daughter to use as bait. As he grows to care about the girl, he realizes this was a terrible idea, but all turns out in the end when he risks his life to save hers and the killer is caught.
Very good movie, well-acted, good script, good pacing, and still relevant.
Notable screen appearance: Gert Fröbe, who plays the villain, later plays Goldfinger.
Ridicule (1996)
arte Mediathek, Deutsch
!#$%^(~! Another movie with an up-close suicide by hanging that got labeled a “comedy”–this time, a French film. When will I learn?
Excellent costumes in this story of an impoverished minor noble named Ponceludon–a seemingly decent man, out working in the fields and fish weirs alongside the people on his estate–in the 1790s who goes to the court at Versailles to ask for money to use for draining a fever-swamp because his people keep dying. An older friend teaches him how to dress, flirt, and play all the silly word games the courtiers enjoy. He’s in love with a neighbor’s daughter, who is marrying a rich old dude to fund her scientific endeavors, and even though he’s banging a married baroness to get money for his own project, this makes him unhappy. Hrm.
The ending was happy; the epilogue was not.
I’m going to assume the wordplay was better in the original French.
Interesting subplot: Ponceludon, sends a deaf-mute boy from his estate to a school run by Charles Michel de l’Épée, who has invented a language of gestures to help deaf people communicate.
The Horse Soldiers (1959)
arte, Deutsch
As I decided I need less arte in my life, they dropped Hoot Gibson’s final film. (Also John Ford, John Wayne, and tennis champion Althea Gibson in her only acting role.) Sigh.
More based-on-a-true-story, this time from the Civil War. Overlooking the obvious plot deficiency–the love interest would have been executed as a spy instead of invited to join the cavalry on their mission behind enemy lines–it was a pretty good film. Good music, good photography, not too gory for a war pic.
The film ends before the mission is complete. According to the IMDB, Ford lost interest in the project after a stunt-riding friend was killed by a fall from a horse.
The Crimson Pirate (1952)
cable (Warner Film), original English
The first act was basically a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but he’s also a Warner Bros. guy, lots of possibilities of cross-pollination here. Burt Lancaster and Nick Kravat combine their circus-acrobatics with running jokes and slapstick in a story about a pirate who seizes a chance to make some money running guns to rebels and falls in love with one of them.
Same light, enjoyable adventure feel as La Tulipe Noire, with crazier stunts. Excellent costumes, lots of color and bling. A scene where the forty-ish, 6’1″ Lancaster disguises himself as a “young unmarried girl” to advance a plan was visual comedy gold.
Mr Radish was impressed by this film as a child, and I am impressed by it now. File this under “classics I should have been shown as a child instead of the same three bad 1970s Disney live-action films over and over.”
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Netflix, original English
Every single day between 1992 and 1998, I heard or read this movie quoted at least three times, by professors, fellow students, co-workers, friends, etc. The bad old days, when people had common cultural references to build rapport…
Anyway, someone mentioned it in a podcast, and I can’t remember the last time I ever watched it straight through–maybe just after I moved to Indy in ’96–so I cued it up. I couldn’t get into it as a complete work. It’s been memed to death, and two decades before memes were invented.
Laughed at all the jokes, though, even through all the memories.
(The German title is “The Knights of the Coconuts”. This has caused much confusion around the Radishhof.)
