December Movies to Remember…or not.

I read somewhere recently that a good movie or art critic should give you enough information that you can decide on your own if you would like to see the movie or art, instead of just praising or dismissing it..but also just enough. I am now scared to re-read my own posts. At any rate, here are my annotated notes about movies I saw in December.

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

arte, Deutsch
…I think a lot was lost in the translation, especially in the scene where a stewardess spoke jive (“Assume all the synchronization of all the movies are always wrong.”). Clint Eastwood stars as an art history professor who moonlights as an assassin (probably more common than we care to acknowledge) to finance his collection of stolen masterpiece paintings. He’s forced into accepting an assignment to kill a rival assassin, who is possibly one of three other men on his team climbing a “death wall” in the Swiss Alps. We’re not sure until the end–and I wasn’t even sure then–who the real villains are in this one, which is probably best viewed as a mountain-climbing film. Some really spectacular sequences there, and Eastwood did all his own stunts. George Kennedy co-stars as a friend who trains him for his mission.

Lots of outdated 70s tropes–muscle-y goons, over-flamboyant gays, and ethnic girls dropping panties about thirty seconds after meeting Clint. I guess I am not surprised I had never heard of this one. Still, it was a decent way to spend a snowed-in evening.

Hey, isn’t that…?: Dalli from Immenhof, all grown-up.

The Ninth Gate (1999)

Netflix, original English
Started this one because old books and Johnny Depp. After I saw the opening credits, I should have turned it off, but I was up to my elbows in pumpkin entrails. Instead of putting down my knife and washing my hands and switching to a 48th rewatch of Rick and Morty, I kept going, and that was a mistake.

Remember when we were all told “it’s OK that Roman Polanski drugs and rapes young girls because his work is so brilliant“? It’s not. At all. The promised “slow burn” was Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the puzzle Depp’s character was trying to solve was barely on the level of Highlights for Children, and the climax was a snooze. I have seen scarier Satans in a Mr Big video. Heck, I’ve seen scarier Satans in German “family films.” It’s 1999, you have to be at least as scary as Bruce Campbell on broadcast TV!

Like the Blue Velvet Experiment, lesson learned.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

3sat (Austrian gov’t TV), Deutsch
Classic; first time I’ve seen it; excellent performances by icons Wayne and Stewart, although I couldn’t really believe a 50-odd-year-old Stewart was fresh out of law-school. Sets and props were mostly good, but I counted 38 stars on the classroom flag and spent the rest of the movie trying to figure out what year it was. I also wanted to know more about the backstory of Pompey.

The long speech about how more government will make everyone more safe and more prosperous has not aged well.

Angel Heart (1987)

arte Mediathek, original English
Warning: Animal abuse and the most disgusting sex scene I have ever seen, and I have been subjected to German art films, so that’s saying somethin’.

Now that was a Satan.

arte is still running DiNiro films for his birthday retrospective; unlike Heat, I felt this one was worth the hassle of scanning my Personalausweis into the arte app to prove I am old enough to view this film during normal adult waking hours. All I knew about this movie going in was the controversies I had read about in the Des Moines Register as a middle-schooler: Cosby Kid Lisa Bonet was in an X-rated film, but it was an “art film, not a porno”, but the director wouldn’t cut the sex scene so it could get an R, and because of the rating many Iowa theaters wouldn’t carry it. (Not that I was ever going to be allowed to see an R-rated film, never mind be driven into town to pay money to see one…) So I was blown away by how good the film was, as a story being told about the private detective Harold Angel (Mickey Rourke), and how the sets and cinematography supported this telling with colors and shapes. An R-rated cut would have cleaned up on awards, including the coveted “You should hunt this down” from radishthegreat.com.

I did not foresee the ending, although I probably should have. It was a good ending.

Appointment with Death (1988)

arte Mediathek, original English
Palate cleanser: Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, supported by Piper Laurie, Carrie Fisher, Hayley Mills, and Lauren Bacall, filmed mostly on location in Israel. Dramatization of the 1938 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie, excellent costuming, a little murder but nothing disturbing. Enjoyable, unchallenging. Note to self: find the rest of the Ustinov Poirots.

Die Sibylle (2022)

arte Mediathek, original Portuguese (English subtitles)
Warning: Pet cats murdered on screen.
From the annual “young directors of Europe” film festival in the arte Mediathek. I was going to give a few of the smaller countries a try, but most of the films’ teasers sounded like overt moral scoldings and I have had enough of that type of movie this year. This is an adaptation of an autobiographical early 20th-century Portuguese novel (that I have not read…sorry to disappoint you like that) taught in high schools, so there was a moral lesson, but like contemporaneous US or British literature, something the reader (viewer) must surmise for herself instead of being continually beaten about the head and neck with it like in Film Mittwoch.

The narrator is a young city-loving writer, describing the life of and her relationship with her recently-deceased spinster aunt, who had spent her life acquiring most of the rural county where she was born. The two women were very alike, and yet wanted very different lives; there was a mutual respect but also a mutual annoyance. The scenery, the sets, and above all the colors were excellent.

I love it when I take a chance on a 21st-century film and it doesn’t suck.

Secret Space UFOs: Apollo 1-11 (2023)

YouTube, original English
This was a let-down. The script went off on too many tangents, and the editing was poor. One example: A 10-minute James Fox story about Buzz Aldrin canceling an interview did not bring any information about the Apollo missions or archives. This was followed by clips of Fox ranting at an elderly Aldrin live on CNN, complete with its chyron scrolling across the bottom, which was incredibly annoying and distracting. Firstly, because it was completely off-topic (Ohio State football, NHL, weather), and secondly, it stuttered where other panel participants had been chopped out of the replay. I don’t want to use the word “amateur”, but it looked like student work, before a round of peer critique.

(“Who are you to complain about other people going off on ranty tangents, Radish?” Yes, I know, the lack of outside editing can really limit an independent work. I would love some critique.)

Princess of Cleves (1961)

arte, Deutsch
Solid and stolid French period film–an adaptation of a novel published in 1678–about a doomed love affair between a married woman and a duke in the court of Henri II and Catherine de Medici. I’m assuming the dialog and portrayals of the court customs are accurate, because they felt so stilted; I appreciate that they didn’t modern it up (I saw all of Reign a few years ago, but it was intended to be persiflage). What kept me riveted was the costumes, some recognizable from contemporary portraiture, and the historical locations used for filming; the title character is very unsympathisch.

The scene where Catherine demands Diane De Poitiers give the family jewels back was also nice.

Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (2021)

Netflix, original…sheep?
Have not laughed so much in ages.

A Christmas Carol (1999)

YouTube, original English
It’s got Treavor Peacock, so you know you’ll be delighted; this true-to-the-source adaptation for American TV stars the loser of my Twitter poll, Patrick Stewart. I enjoyed it; lots of stars of British television (I counted eight denizens of Midsommer County) and confusingly accurate costumes and sets.

Drei Männer im Schnee (1955)

BR, original Deutsch
This is a charming Austrian adaptation of a book by Erich Kästner (you want to click on that link), who also wrote the screenplay and recorded the narration. A company owned by a wealthy business tycoon holds a contest giving away winter vacations in the Alps, the boss wins a week’s stay in the Grand Hotel under an assumed name. Craving some normality, he buys himself some used clothes and heads out. His butler also books in for a week under an assumed name, to keep an eye on him from a distance. First prize, a two-week stay, is won by an unemployed man, who tries to trade the prize for money or a job, but is turned down.

As a joke, the daughter phones the hotel to tell them there is a very very rich man on his way who will pretend to be poor when he checks in, but they should treat him like royalty; the hotel staff assumes the unemployed man must be the guy. Hilarity ensues–gold-diggers, more top-shelf cognac than one man could drink–but he strikes up a close friendship with the “normal guy” tycoon, falls in love with his daughter (who also does not tell him how rich she really is), gets a surprise job offer from the company, and is very surprised when he shows up for a meeting with the boss’s boss.

The scenery–Austria before Instagram–is lovely, the ladies’ evening dresses are lovely, and there is about a foot of lovely snow in every outdoor adventure, including the butler’s skiing lesson. The dialog is funny. There’s a rather fake-looking snowman, but it’s cute, and the scene was cute.

I was also made happy by the appearance of Oma Jantzen from Immenhof, as the eccentric Schlüter’s wise-cracking housekeeper. Just need Dicki for the hat trick.

And a movie I didn’t see

When we went to the Diözesanmuseum Freising (hereafter: DIMU) for the Weihnachtskrippen (nativity scenes) exhibition, we also strolled through the exhibition on Francis of Assisi. Two rooms of this exhibition were devoted to the 1972 Zeferelli film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a retelling of Francis’ biography that was apparently controversial in Europe. I don’t care much for standing around watching clips in a museum, but they had some original costumes on display–and not behind glass, I was able to get close enough to study the floridly ornate robe that Alec Guinness wore for the death scene of Pope Innocent III. It is cheap and shabby in real life:

Of course I wasn’t expecting real gold and pearls, but a little craftsmanship and a little Raffinesse with the plastic and clothesline would have been nice. I was unwittingly forced to confront my acceptance of the illusions–my own participation the lies being told–presented on the screen, and I don’t like any of my conclusions.