The quadrennial regional soccer tournament started about halfway through the month, and I had the painfully brilliant idea of watching a movie from each participating nation. Emphasis on painful (I am exaggerating for comic effect–OR AM I?!?!)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
Another celebrated classic I somehow missed out on earlier, although I have an impression that the play it was based on was done by the HS or another local amateur drama company when I was too young for it. Anyway. Cary Grant and Frank Capra–Grant’s a famous bachelor polemicist who has just attracted media attention by marrying a neighbor girl. While breaking the news to his maiden aunts, he learns their cellar is full of dead bodies because they’ve been poisoning elderly men as a “social service”. The other rings of this circus are a brother who thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt–he thinks all the digging he’s been doing in the cellar is for public works projects–and a violent criminal brother who shows up with an insane plastic surgeon and a dead body of his own. The comedy comes from all the contradictions between appearances and deeds, simple and complex misunderstandings.
Would kids today even understand that the mentally ill used to be treated in sanatoriums, instead of having their psychoses affirmed by all government and medical facilities?
I really enjoyed the first half (there is a nice baseball scene) and Raymond Massey, but the crazy over-the-top shouting and slapstick went on a little too long for me. According to the IMDB, Grant wasn’t all that fond of it, either, so I don’t feel bad.
Wildcats (1986)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
Damn shame LL Cool J’s title track never made the soundtrack album; we need more lyrics about Raymond Berry.
Movie debut of both Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, but mostly a Goldie Hawn vehicle. Even though I grew up in a time and place where high school coaches inviting the team over to their house to drink beer was an actual thing and no one dared challenge it, I had to suspend a lot of disbelief for most of the plot points.
Typical feel-good 80s sports film.
Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) (1960)
arte, Deutsch
French gangster flic partially based on a true story, starring action star Lino Ventura. He’s a wanted criminal hiding out in Italy with a wife and two young sons; when the police get too close, he makes a plan with an accomplice to sneak them all back into France and hook back up with an old friend with a Paris criminal syndicate. His wife and accomplice are killed in the attempt, and he can’t leave his sons. His first attempt at finding a safe place for them nearly gets them caught, but his friend manages to sneak them all into Paris, with the help of a random love interest who didn’t really fit into the story.
Then I dozed off and woke up to the narrator explaining that after he was arrested and tried, he was sentenced to death. Which is the same ending as Flic Story with Alain Delon.
Mr Radish enjoyed it; he knew Ventura from other movies he saw as a kid and there were a lot of great cars in the chase scenes.
TL;DR: French.
The Trial (1962)
arte Mediathek, original English
arte dusted off this Orson Welles/Anthony Perkins French film for the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka. Once I stopped trying to understand what was happening, it made more sense, and I was able to enjoy the striking cinematography. The post-war brutalist council estate buildings were real, and already bleak when they were new.
Kafka wrote the novel (which I have not read) in 1914, and the mood feels very contemporary. “It’s characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he’s innocent but also in ignorance.” Indeed. I am not the first person to notice this, at least.
Confusing, depressing, occasionally funny. Can’t really say I enjoyed the evening on the couch with my cat (who slept through it), but it was thought-provoking, and better than watching soccer.
Also features Romy Schneider.
I had no other choice.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Netflix, English
Best movie of the year so far. Just go watch it.
Executive Action (1973)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
The opening credits were cropped strangely, and I don’t know if this is from the original German theatrical release or something new for current cable television. In the back of my head I was always wondering what else was cut out, what else was I missing.
This film, written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, considers the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone, which was apparently controversial at the time by mixing actual historical footage with imagined scenes. Soviet-fan Grandpa Walton plays a “conservative” businessman at the heart of the plot, dedicated Democrat Robert Ryan plays their openly racist leader, and Burt Lancaster plays a gov’t agent who has organized coups abroad. (The team he has on speed dial includes the X-Files’ Colonel Belt.)
At the end of the film, there is a disclaimer that they are only suggesting an alternative theory. Definitely worth seeing, even though it’s obvious all the principles were pushing their own political leanings. (How hilarious and terrifying it is that JFK was considered a left-wing extremist for espousing policies now considered dangerously right-wing.)
There were also a lot of visibly prominent Pepsi signs and paraphernalia. I always thought Texas was Dr Pepper country…
Capricorn One (1977)
arte Mediathek, original English
Surprisingly contemporary-feeling film about a NASA official faking a Mars mission to keep the politicians happy and the funds flowing. Telly Savalas has a great part as a biplane pilot in the closing scenes, and OJ Simpson struggling through his half-dozen lines was retrospectively interesting. Some nice desert scenery.
It’s so much fun to watch action scenes with no CGI. I can recommend it just on that, but the story is thought-provoking and still relevant today.
Big Eyes (2014)
arte Mediathek, original English
Tim Burton biopic of American painter Margaret Keane, who was previously unknown to me. She started a movement of stylized child portraiture in the 1950s, promoted by a shady San Francisco gossip reporter and the abusive con man she married on a whim. Part of her husband’s promotional strategy was telling fans and TV hosts that he was the artist of these hugely popular pieces. The situation grows increasingly intolerable, until one night in a rage he tries to set her studio on fire with Margaret and her daughter inside of it, and she escapes to Hawaii, where she joins the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and sues her husband for the rights to her artwork in a federal court.
Keane’s paintings aren’t my thing, but artist biopics are, and there were lots of bright colors, beautiful scenery, and some humor in the first and final acts. There is also some discussion about the importance of curators and their role in keeping the general public from consuming art they might enjoy instead of only art they are prescribed. *cough*arte*cough*
Why does the judge look familiar?: He’s Shredder, baby! Ah-ha-ha-ha!
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Cable (Warner Film), original English
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group A post.
The Trader (2018)
Netflix, original Georgian with German subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group F post.
Körhinta (Merry-Go-Round) (1956)
arte Mediathek, original Hungarian with English subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group A post. Heh, this is fun.
O Lobo Solitário (The Lone Wolf) (2021)
arte Mediathek, original Portuguese with English subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group F post.
UFOLOGISTS (2022)
YouTube (seems to have been removed), original English
You know the drill.
Afgrunden (The Abyss) (1910)
Danish Film Institute website, Danish cards with English subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group C post.
Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920)
arte, original German cards
With all due respect to Godzilla, the other best movie I’ve seen so far this year.
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group A post.
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
arte Mediathek, original English
This star-studded version of the Agatha Christie tale had been on my list for awhile, but when it finally showed up and I got to see it, I didn’t care for it. The fake accents were hard to understand (arte only offered me French subtitles) and there were too many anachronisms. It gets off on a wrong foot when a band in a restaurant plays “Good Ship Lollipop” while Poirot is having a serious conversation, and it doesn’t get better. Reportedly Dame Christie thought this was the best of the adaptations of her work, but I would have rather seen another Ustinov. YMMV.
Sniadanie do lózka (2010)
Netflix, original Polish with English subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group D post, when I finish it.
Die Nachbarn von oben (2023)
Netflix, Deutsch
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group A post.
Que baje Dios y lo vea (2017)
Netflix, Deutsch
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group B post, when I finish it.
Spaceballs (1987)
Amazon Prime, original English
Happy 98th birthday, Mel Brooks!
Please read my original lament. And just to prove I was not making any of it up, here are some pictures of subtitles (which were hard to get, because every time I tried to rewind I tripped the new Amazon advertising system).
But in original English, it’s one of my favorite films of all time.
Prípad mrtvého neboztíka (2020)
Netflix, original Czech with English subtitles
Please see the Euro ’24 Filmfest Group F post.
3 Comments on “June Movie Log”