8/1/25 (Fri)
A recent retrospective of the work of French writer/director Alain Guiraudie in connection with his latest release, Misericordia (2024), resurrected this 2013 film. The isolated scenes that I had watched on Criterion seemed like gratuitous porn disguised as suspense, which dampened my interest, but recommendations from friends made me reconsider. Continue reading
7/21/25 (Mon)
I finally got around to seeing Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1953 classic after enjoying the jaw-dropping US remake Sorcerer nearly a year earlier. This version was equally spectacular and intense but differed in certain ways (Friedkin always insisted that he based his film on the original novel).
7/18/25 (Fri)
Roger Donaldson’s 1987 film is the third official adaption of The Big Clock, the first of which I saw just a few weeks back. He takes significant liberties with the text – for one thing, there’s no longer a clock – but achieves a solid thriller.
7/15/25 (Tues)
Alain Guiraudie’s quirky black comedy of 2024 initially reminded me of Belle Epoque in its story of a good-looking outsider whose sexual attraction disrupts small-town life. Here, though, the outsider’s intentions may not be so innocent.
3/17/26 (Tues)
Mervyn LeRoy’s well intentioned 1932 crime film was the industry’s third biggest earner that year after Gold Diggers of 1933 (which he also directed) and 42nd Street (which he was supposed to direct). It was based on the previous year’s same-titled autobiography (the state, i.e., …Georgia Chain Gang!, was removed for commercial and political reasons), though naturally taking certain liberties with the character and story.
3/1/26 (Sun)
A lonely gaijin (Brendan Fraser) living in Tokyo is struggling as a would-be actor since his starring role seven years earlier in a Japanese toothpaste commercial. He spends much of his time in his tiny apartment looking forlornly Rear Window-like at people in the various apartments on the other side. Summoned for a job one day, he is surprised to arrive at a funeral – and even more shocked when the corpse pops up from the coffin and thanks everyone.
It turns out that the mourners were simply actors, employed by the man to provide him comfort that he will be remembered and that his life was worth something. The bewildered Fraser catches the eye of a businessman, who turns out to be an agency for just such bit players. He hires Fraser to act out real-life roles.
2/20/26 (Fri)
I learned of Brecht’s 1935 short piece in researching Crooked Cross and found a performance online. The setting is again contemporary Germany. The first 20-25 minutes of the 30-minute work constitute a monologue by a woman who is calling friends to let them know that she’ll be leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks – she tells her bridge partner to find someone to fill in, and ensures another friend that the planned dinner next week will go on despite her absence as her husband will still be there. She calls a servant to ask if she’ll take care of the husband, an eminent scientist, while she’s away, saying this time, though, that she’ll be back in a few months. We come to realize that this is no ordinary journey. We learn that she is Jewish, and her husband is not.
2/15/26 (Sun)
Mervyn LeRoy’s joyous musical celebration comes between two other Warner Bros backstage musicals the same year, 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, that pretty much define the era. The songs are performed as stage productions rather than character or narrative numbers and are essentially interchangeable, having nothing to do with the underlying story; the producers in fact switched out the final number for a new song with no effect at all on the narrative. The show is based on a stage farce from 1919 that already had two previous film treatments. This one apparently was supposed to be a drama as well but added musical numbers following the success of 42nd Street (they moved fast in those days). Its huge popularity spawned several sequels.
2/4/26 (Wed)
I was made aware of this startling 1924 silent film when the irreplaceable Mark Steyn featured the German novel from two years earlier in his column. The film had long been thought lost, but fragments were found in poor condition in Amsterdam in 1991, which were only shown publicly years later. Then, in one of those seemingly impossible coincidences, a full copy in excellent condition emerged at a French flea market in 2015. That was digitally restored and released three years later.
A large city – Vienna in the original, a limp “Utopia” in the film – is roiled by economic troubles and severe public discontent amid a stark divide between the decadent rich and the struggling poor. Looking for a scapegoat, politicians soon target the Jews, blaming them for all the city’s woes. The Jews are compared to a pest that must be exterminated to protect the roses. The government orders that all Jews be expelled from the city, though allowing second-generation Jews to remain if they agree to be baptized. It arranges stock cars to take them away along with all their worldly possessions, ripping them from their roots. The city is soon bereft of all Jewish life. It quickly becomes clear that its business and cultural life has been torn apart as well: the theaters are empty, fashion houses flounder, the currency plunges, businesses die. “When you expelled the Jews,” says one person, “you banished prosperity as well.”
1/27/26 (Tues)
Richard Linklater’s 2025 film is a credible fantasy about the great lyricist Lorenz Hart on the opening night of Oklahoma!, his long-time partner’s first venture with another lyricist – and his mixed feelings when the show, which he mocks as unsophisticated schlock, turns out to be a massive critical and popular success.
Hart’s numbers with Rodgers over the preceding quarter century were and are known for their urbane wit and intelligence and remain among the most golden songs of America’s Golden Age of Song. But in terms of musical theater, the lyrics always sound like the literate Hart, not like the characters on stage. While the team created numerous innovative musicals, the songs themselves remain New York-bound in sensibility. It was Hammerstein who took musical lyrics into the next dimension as specific expressions of character and story; his Oklahomans sound Oklahoman. His songs are integral to the story they are telling, and the story is inseparable from the songs, creating an American equivalent of opera. When Hart is watching the new show, he is viewing his own obsolescence. His reaction is complicated by his personal demons, including a midget-like stature (a miniscule 147cm or 4’10”) that complicates his desire for a romantic partner and his descent into alcoholism. The film examines him over the course of the opening night.
1/9/26 (Fri)
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s 1997 film shows the influence of his mentor Kiarostami, who penned the director’s The White Balloon just two years earlier, in the breaking of the fourth wall. A simple story about a girl whose mother fails to pick her up from school, which takes up the first 40% or so of the movie, becomes something very different when the seven-year-old actress becomes miffed for some reason and, throwing off her costume, refuses to film the final scene. As she storms off, she forgets to remove her body mike, so the director, having film to spare, orders the crew to continue following and filming her as she maneuvers Tehran’s busy streets.
sekenbanashi 