December Movie Post

After I wrote last month’s log post, I didn’t watch another movie for two weeks. I started a couple of the ArteKino Festival 2024, but after 10-15 minutes, I turned them all off and read a book or re-watched some Psych for the seventeenth time.

Even the Portuguese pic about art forgery in Victorian London–I should love that! But I couldn’t get started with it. The first act was dry and the dialog stilted.

Le Corbeau (1943)

arte, Deutsch
I enjoyed the 1949 French “horror/thriller” flick Histoires extraordinaires à faire peur ou à faire rire during the Euro ’24 Filmfest, so I was definitely going to give a Vichy-era “horror/thriller” a try.

The titular Raven writes anonymous poison-pen letters to everyone in his village, threatening to expose their secrets to everyone else. He/she knows everything about everyone. The village is determined to figure out who it is, turning their attention to a number of individuals and almost lynching a nun. The “hero”–a man who devoted his life to committing as many (illegal) abortions as possible after his wife died in childbirth–thinks he figured it out, but (SPOILER) the mother of a man who committed suicide after reading his letter gets there first.

I didn’t care for most of the characters (maybe that was part of the point), but the photography was great, excellent use of light and shadow, and plot foreshadowing by focusing on buildings or objects. And I spent a lot of time thinking about the German love of denouncing their neighbors. Here’s the website for Germans to report people typing things they don’t like.

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

Netflix, original English
This movie shows a world that no longer exists–and I doubt that a world where someone scheduled to land at O’Hare at 8:03 can be picked up and back home in their exurb by 8:30 ever existed. That was a genuine laugh.

Not as awful as the industry reviews, but not as good as the audience reviews. Got some embroidery done, so it wasn’t time wasted.

Conclave (2024)

Kino, original English
Mr Radish saw a trailer and review in television, and thought we would both enjoy it. And we did.

Der Boandlkramer und die ewige Liebe (2021)

BR, original Deutsch
A sequel to Die Geschichte vom Brandner Kaspar, which we saw in TV before I started keeping lists; Boandlkramer (Bully Herbig of Bullyparade) is a Bavarian Grim Reaper, who takes the souls from around the region to their eternal reward, whatever it might be. On a post-WWII assignment to retrieve a young boy sent for by Heaven, he falls in love with the boy’s mother, submits a skirt-chasing business dude scheduled for Hell (Sebastian Bezzel of Niederkaltenkirchen) in the boy’s place, and makes a deal with Satan (Hape Kerkeling, Kein Pardon) to become visible to mortals, to try to win her over–with advice from skirt-chasing business dude. Lol.

Some Laurel and Hardy references, but the thought-provoking part of this one was: the boy’s mother was getting ready to marry a man from a neighboring farm, to provide him a father, but he kept insisting his actual father, who never returned from Russia, was still alive and would come back for him. The parish cemetery in Freising is full of husbands and sons who never came back from Russia, alive or dead, and I understood both her desire to move on, and his need to keep believing until he got some proof. Spoiler alert: He came back in time to stop the wedding. Phew!

Harlem Nights (1989)

tubi, original English
Della Reece stole the show, which I enjoyed despite the depraved and graphic violence, because the sets and costumes were a-maz-ing. I can’t remember why I had this one on my list–maybe my lockdown Goodfellas funk–but I’m glad I jumped on it when I saw it on offer.

Rio Lobo (1970)

arte Mediathek, original English
Ending the year with The Duke. Not my favorite. Started out really good with a train robbery–I like the idea weaponizing hornets–but then it got silly. I did not anticipate the twist at the end.