August Movie Log

Started the month off with a three-week Martian Death Cold. The volumes of slime that I had to honk out of my head every five minutes convinced me my skull is completely empty most of the time. But I finally cleared out my podcast backlog! Also saw a few movies.

RadishFlix on YouTube
2024 on the IMDB

Queen of Outer Space (1958)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
Mr Radish recorded this one for me, saying “It looks like the sort of thing you enjoy”, and he was not wrong. B-grade sci-fi vehicle for Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Campy and predictable with excellent sets and costumes.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

arte Mediathek, Deutsch
Ridiculously sad film about a woman who threw her life away for a man who barely noticed she existed. A 1940s film based on a 1920s book (author Stefan Zweig fled Austria after his books were banned by the actual historical you know who) about the turn of the 20th century–I can’t work this into my period film theory at all. But it’s superbly crafted. Louis Jordan is enjoyable to look at and the costumes, sets, and cinematography are excellent. There’s a fun scene where the couple enjoys a virtual train ride in an amusement park, where they sit and paintings of scenery scrolls past the window. I am convinced I have seen this ride in the Precinema History twitter account, which is a firehose of information, but I can’t remember what it’s called.

Immer die Radfahrer (1958)

BR, original Deutsch
Light post-war German comedy (I wonder when the European film industry shifted to “suicide is comedy“?) about three middle-aged friends who take a bicycle trip through the mountains, like they did the summer they were 17 or 18. They’ve lost touch, but classics Professor Johannes (played by the father of frequent RadishFlixer Romy Schneider) gets the band back together, and they take off, headed for a village where they spent a couple of weeks falling in love back before the war.

It started out good–rough camping along the roadside is always good for physical comedy laughs–but got increasingly silly, thanks to the spoiled-brat teenage son of Eierlikör magnate Fritz. He chases them down because he wants Papa to buy him a Porsche convertible, and then leaves his girlfriend on the side of the road with the three men. (She forgives him after he sings. Ugh.) Awful stuff, but the kid was played by Peter Kraus, “the German Elvis”, so it’s obvious this character was written into the story to sell records, with no regard for the rest of the story (Fritz himself is played by Heinz Erhardt, a popular comedian of the postwar era). Fritz’s wife is also chasing them down, convinced this vacation is a sex junket. Eventually they reach the village, suffer a series of comic misunderstandings, then happy endings all around.

I think. I kind of spaced off around the second unnecessary Kraus song.

I cannot recommend this one as entertainment, but it was a fascinating time capsule of fashion, music, and furniture. It also had really fabulous outdoor scenes/establishing shots of lush mountains and lake vistas, filmed in Kärnten, Austria. Fun for me: saw a metal sign for Villacher beer on an old barn; I had this beer in 2017, on a quick overnight to Kärnten. If I outlive my cat, we’re going there again.

Opening credits: I recognized the name Waltraud Haas, who plays the wife of Johannes–from Das Glück ist ein Vogerl (2020). Not all my research ends up in the blog, although maybe it should.

Project X (1968)

Netflix, original English
Disappointingly tedious vintage sci-fi set in a cryogenics lab in 2118, plot centered around recovering memories from a dead spy who was also (why?) the world’s expert on life in the 1960s. I couldn’t get it to make any sense, and the aesthetics were dull.

The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

Netflix, original English
The opening act reminded me a bit of Zohan, and it was funny, but it went on too long and the violence was too cartoony. Enjoyed picking out all the cameos, but it became a slog.

This was one of the first Netflix originals. I might have liked it better had I seen it when it was new and I was dumber.

Wise Guys (1986)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
With Danny DeVito and Harvey Keitel, it should have been funnier than it was. Disappointing.

JFK (1991)

Cable, (Kabel Eins), Deutsch
It took eighteen months to track this one down after hearing about it on a history of Hollywood podcast–it finally ran in the middle of the night on the 60th anniversary of the assassination. Then I needed another ten months to find a three-hour block of time to sit on the couch with my cat (who was uninterested) and watch it uninterrupted. Sigh. Based on the true story of New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison’s (born in Knoxville, Iowa) investigation into a possible conspiracy, and eventual trial of an alleged participant, it used a lot of historical footage interspersed with the acted scenes. Reminded me of Executive Action, except Oliver Stone didn’t pretend LBJ wasn’t involved to score points over contemporaneous political enemies.

I thought it was strange that a film with so many A-Listers would be so memory-holed, until Kevin Costner (Garrison) gave his closing argument in the courtroom. Change the names, and he could be giving that speech in August 2024. Yeah, better bury that.

I am irritated I missed the John Larroquette cameo, but I completely understood the reference to The Trial. It’s the small things.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

arte Mediathek, Deutsch
This “satire” of Holmes, written by Billy Wilder, and apparently edited by someone who didn’t understand what he was trying to do (as per my post-view research) was a slog. The first half-hour was about the Russian ballet, and eventually the prima asking him for his sperm, and then it veered off into a missing persons case with an amnesiac Belgian woman, who was really a German spy. There’s a secret submarine project in Loch Ness, and I had heard the story about the prop lost at the bottom of the lake from some cryptid podcast or another.

I kept waiting for it to make sense–it’s not Kafka, after all–and it never did. Great costumes and sets, though. Fun fact: Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula) plays Mycroft Holmes, making him one of three men to play both Holmes brothers at some point in their career.

Tombstone (1993)

Cable (Warner Film), original English
I was going to just link up my last review, but when I saved the title onto this year’s list, realized my last watch was 2019, before the creation of the Radish the Great Experience. Huh.

Anyway, I sat down with the intention of trying to discern why this one is so much better than Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner, especially since anytime someone says “Kurt Russell” I think of him kicking Elvis in the shins. More action, snappier dialogue, and tighter editing. Even the brooding scenes had some urgency.

Trivia: August 14 is Doc Holliday’s birthday, which I learned after I saw the film on that date.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Cable (AXN Black), original English
This might not be an “every summer” movie, this might be an “every five years” movie. Once again, I enjoyed the un-memed jokes, but not as much as last year.

Blackmail (1929)

arte Mediathek, original English
A proto-Noir from Alfred Hitchcock. My post-watch research reveals there were two versions released, one silent and one talkie, because not all theaters had the new equipment to run sound. arte showed me the silent, restored with a new (2021) score. I appreciate the effort, but I’d still rather hear a fresh recording of the original score.

“The first Hitchcock blonde”, Anny Ondra, didn’t need dialogue, she had a face. The thriller-action is set in motion after she ditches her boring cop steady to go home with someone more interesting, who tries to rape her. Happy endings all around, eventually.

Splash (1983)

arte, Deutsch
I’m not sure why I never saw this contemporary retelling of the Little Mermaid story before now; there’s some nudity and swearing, but no more than anything else I saw in high school. Huh.

I use the word “contemporary” because this is definitely a time capsule film; I laughed a lot at John Candy playing squash while smoking a cigarette. Smoking indoors!

I’m also not sure why arte is showing cute, commercially-successful American movies. Oh, Tom Hanks, albeit in his skinny, mouthy phase. And–as with most set in New York City–it felt like a foreign film to me. What a weird place that is, creepy atmosphere, strange customs.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Netflix, original English
Warning: Pet murder, but you knew that.
I thought I was prepared for this one, since “bunny-boiler” has been a common epithet since this movie was released, but I was surprised at how quickly the Glenn Close character turned psychotic. Bit of that Noir vibe from earlier this year: Dude makes a bad decision, then pays for it. “Don’t stick your dick in crazy,” yes, but it was hard to muster up any sympathy for a guy who neglects the family dog for some strange.

Fun to see Ellen Foley. I need to rewatch Night Court.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

arte, Deutsch
I was shown this this John Cleese cult classic in college by a guy who loved it, and couldn’t make any sense of it past the jewel robbery in the opening act. Same story about fifteen years ago, can’t understand the appeal at all. Since I have been learning and growing through the RadishFlix project–I am conversant with Fassbinder!!!–I thought I would try it again.

Nope. Still can’t make any sense of it, or why people think it’s so great, past the jewel robbery in the opening act.

But I did laugh at the translators choosing the Bavarian light swear “Sacklzement!” for Otto to scream when he gets trapped in the wet cement. Intellectually I know the word is a corruption of “sacrament” (that’s why it’s considered a swear), and has nothing to do with sacks of cement; bizarre associations are a cornerstone of comedy and I was desperate for something to laugh at.

Trapeze (1956)

arte Mediathek, original English
Warning: A horse dies, in what I thought was foreshadowing but actual wasn’t. Harrumph.

In my post-watch research on The Flame and the Arrow, which I saw in 2020 before I started the blog, I learned Burt Lancaster was a circus performer before he moved to Hollywood, and I have been watching for this in every one of his movies ever since. His early training was extremely obvious in The Crimson Pirate, for example.

Plot was a standard love triangle with business entanglements. Gina Lollobrigida suffered from the same grey-face as Joan Collins did in The Land of the Pharaohs, something to look into.

Bullyparade: The Movie (2017)

Amazon Prime, original Deutsch
Feature-length version of Bully Herbig‘s sketch comedy television program of the same name. The opening segment–a Back to the Future parody, where two East Germans travel back to 1989 to prevent the fall of the Berlin Wall because they hate David Hasselhoff–was really good, I laughed a lot. The second segment, a parody of the Winnetou films, started out okay, but went on too long, becoming increasingly unfunny. From there, it went downhill fast.

Meh.

Chariots of the Gods (1970)

YouTube, original English
Rewatch while I was doing some other stuff. The music is cheesier than I remembered.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)

arte Mediathek, original English
Warning: on-screen rape with passive onlookers
BeeGees, polyester double-knit, NYC–I hate all of these things, but this movie looms large in our cultural heritage and I’d never seen it before.

Sweet Bastet’s catnip mousie, how did this steaming pile of chili-night aftermath become an icon?!?! Vile people, shallow and violent and hate-filled and obsessed with the base and the trivial.

Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)

tubi, original English
Palate-cleansing rewatches, with suitable nosh–and thankfully it wasn’t authentic New-York-Style, it had the brand’s normal bready crust instead of soggy grease-soaked cardboard.

The downside of watching the sequel the same day as the original was noticing the effects. There was CGI in the first one, yes, but most of the monsters and rubble seemed to be practical effects, rubber and miniatures, and they were just plain better.

Das Korbiniansjubiläum in Freising 1924 (1924)

Stadtmuseum Freising, original Deutsch (silent)
Documentary short film of the mass, parades, and “100,000 pilgrims arriving by train” for the last celebration of Korbinian’s arrival in Freising. It does kind of go on a bit–other museum visitors only lasted a few minutes, others walked right past–with endless footage of priests who don’t look thrilled to be there, but Mr Radish and I enjoyed trying to identify the streets and buildings, the cars, and the fashions. The priests in particular–about a fourth of them were wearing the same lace on their formal garment (sorry, I am unfamiliar with the terminology), but the rest all had different patterns and symbols. Also–you can see them in my Bad Handy Foto–all the little girls with big floppy hair bows.

Ridiculously fascinating. Recommended. Pro-tip: Free entry on Tuesdays!