The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

 Watching this movie reminded me of my first time watching 'Saturday Night Fever', I thought I was going to be watching a silly disco movie, but it turned out be something of surprisingly more substance.  I assumed that 'Cherbourg' was something of an overrought peon to romantic love, it surprised me, it was a different, much better and more substantive movie then I had expected.

It's 1957 and Catherine Deneuve is a 17 year old girl, just out of school and working at her mother's umbrella shop in a seaside French resort community. She falls in love with a 20 year old mechanic played by Nino Castlenuovo, whose a genuinely good guy. They are besotted; Nino gets drafted into the war in Algeria; they consummate; two months later Catherine tells her mother she's pregnant, and that is as much as I'll say about the plot. This is a sung through musical in French, and one of the prettiest looking movies I have ever seen. Other then those few details it is probably best to go in unawares. Highly recommended, it hit it out of the park and left me with a big grin. ****

Quigley Down Under (1990)

 It's 1990 and the fam is down in Vernal visiting grandma, dad agrees to take us kids to a movie, we want to see The Rescuers Down Under but can only find Quigley Down Under. 10 year old me, thinking it very unlikely that there would be two movies in theaters at the same time with 'Down Under' in the title, suggests that maybe this is an alternate name for the Disney cartoon; dad knows better, we watch stuff at grandma's instead.

I would not have appreciated Quigley at the time, but three and a half decades later it's pretty alright. Tom Sellek, trying to have a movie career, plays Matthew Quigley, a late 19th century, American cowboy sharp shooter who travels to Australia for a job offer from rancher Alan Rickman (this during the actors smarmy hayday). Turns out the job is to help Rickman genocide some aboriginal's. An enlightened Quigley punches his would be employer out a window for this suggestion. In short order he and a somewhat delusional prostitute called Crazy Cora (under rated beauty Laura San Giacomo) are left to die in the Outback. The two rise to the occasion and with the help of the natives bring justice to Rickman and his hired hands.

Relocated to a different continent, this is still a pretty standard Western, thirty years earler John Wayne or Henry Fonda would have made good Quigley's. Takes a bit to get going, but a comfortable watch. Movie was not helped at the box office by coming out around the same time as Dances with Wolves, or The Rescuers Down Under for that matter. **1/2

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

 'Edge of Tomorrow' aka 'Live, Die, Repeat' uses a reasonably clever premise for in essence a video game movie; a somewhat smarmy Tom Cruise is forced to relive a battle with aliens 'Groundhog Day' style until he gets it right. Satisfying but not very deep actioner has Cruise in fine form. I liked how they played his relationship to female lead Emily Blunt, 21 years his junior, as attraction and respect, but ever shy of traditional romantic partnering. ***

The Substance (2024)

 This film set out to repulse me and it succeeded. Directed by French woman Coralie Fargeat, it's a critique of narcissism and Hollywoods treatment of women past a certain age. It is also the best example of body horror this side of Carpenter and Cronenberg. An aging Demi Moore takes a mysterious substance which allows here to recapture her youth in the form of Margaret Qualley... sort of. There are alot of catches. It dosen't end well. Pretty damn gross. The movie hits you over the head with its points and the world of the film is far from realistic. It's an extended metaphor, something that dosen't always work for me but I was okay with it here. I wasn't always okay with the grossness. This movie is a fairly impressive accomplishment, still probably don't see it. ***1/2

The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022)

Warner Herzog's documentary of the famed,  Volcano chasing French couple is chiefly an aprictiation of the often stunning footage they captured over a quarter century of field work. Much of the film is haunting, but none more so then the footage taken in their final hours, they were killed in a 1991 eruption in Japan. Combing through the footage of others Herzog discovers the last known footage of the couple, a little hazy but matching what they were wearing earlier, this footage was taken likely a few minutes before they overtaken by the pyroclastic flow. I learned the term pyroclastic flow from this movie. ***1/2

Nosferatu (2024)

 Remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent classic, which in turn is a slight variation on Bram Stoker's Dracula designed to get around copyright law; there is also a great West German version directed by Warner Herzog in the 1970's. Robert Eggers, one of the most visually interesting directors currently working and a big horror buff, has been wanting to remake this film since he was a kid, and in earnest since the success of his debut feature 'The Witch' in 2015. Set in 1830's Germany and Transvalina, the movie boasts the directors trade mark attention to period detail. It's dark and operatic, strong performances all around with Willim Defoe and Lily-Rose Depp the standouts, turns out the latter can act, she's not just a nepotim hire. Certainly not for all tastes, but if your interested I would recommend seeing on the big screen. ***1/2

The Passenger (2023)

 Janitor Kyle Gallner takes fast food employee Johnny Berchtold hostage with the stated purpose of "helping" the very shy young man, after first massacring his co workers at a small town Louisana burger place. Strong central performances, including Liza Weil, in what proves to be an exquisitely constructed story of pain, regret and hope. Despite its run down, depressing, blue collar setting, this movie is beautiful. ***1/2

Caged (1950)

 Eleanor Parker in the first of three Oscar nominated performances plays Marie Allen, a niave 19 year old who goes to jail as an accessory after her husband dies in a robbery attempt. Doc drama style expose of women's prisons show how the system fails Marie and the sweet young woman leaves jail, hardened, embittered and likely to end up back there. The B plot concerns the power struggle between the abuseive prison matrion played by Hope Emerson and an idealistic wardon played by Agnes Moorehead, who tries largely in vain to make things better in what may be the best role she ever got. I found this movie to be unexpectedly strong, it is often compared favorably to the asylum expose 'The Snake Pit', though this movie is more depressing. ***1/2

Viva (2007)

 Writer/director/producer/editor/star Anne Biller's highly stylized story of a house wife who embarks on a journy of self discovery and psycho sexual liberation in 1972 California. Not as good as her later 'The Love Witch', movie is campy fun with stilted dialogue and a message I can't quite make out. Great look to the thing despite the obviously limited budget, I loved the retro lounge style soundtrack. Lots of nudity, but more a commentary on erotocism then actually errotic. **1/2

Savage Dawn (1985)

 Ex CIA agents Lance Hendrickson and George Kennedy, the latter's two young adult children, and for some reason a bunch of Chinese people, fight back against a biker gang and the stolen military hardware they use to besiege a small Texas town. This feels like it should have been a cult movie, however it never seems to have achieved that status. **1/2

Widow Clicquot (2023)

 Inspired by the true story of Barbe Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who ran her husband's champagne winery after his death in 1805, and is credited with the invention of pink champagne and a double fermenting process still used today. An interesting enough story they wait until about half way through the film before addressing the mental unraveling of her husband in the years before his death. In flash backs he is at first portrayed as very loving and of a progressive temperament, seeing his decline makes the story and Barbe's accomplishments all the more moving and impressive. Haley Bennett is both strong and radiant in the lead. ***

The Old Way (2023)

 This is a Nicolas Cage western, and being able to say you have seen a Nicolas Cage western is about the only reason to watch this movie, other then a strong performance from young Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Cage's daughter. This is a revenge movie, a shitty variant on 'Unforgiven' that feels like it's adapted from a pulp western paperback from the 1950's, but was actually written for the screen by a man who likely read a bunch of pulp western paperbacks from the 1950's. This movie radiates cheapness and only on rare occasion do its various clichés elicit some amusement. I admire Nick Searcy's commitment to his exposition heavy role as a Marshall. *1/2

Naked Vengence (1985)

 'Naked Vengence' is a kind of female lead varient on a 'Death Wish' movie, and I wish they'd made more. Staring the beautiful Deborah Tranelli, a television actress in her only film role, she plays an aspiring actress in a very happy marriage to a successful architect. After a dinner to celebrate their 1st wedding anniversary the husband tries to stop an assult on a woman in the parking lot only to be killed for his trouble, the assailant getting away. After the funeral Deborah decides to spend some recoup time with her parents in the small California town where she grew up, only other then them everyone in town (with a very few exceptions) turns out to be a real asshole. She is gang rapped in her parents home, her folks killed in an attempt to help her. While in the hospital she decides to seek her revenge, while at first she appears to be near catatonic she sneaks out at night and begins a killing spree against her attackers. The film puts its lead through some real harrowing stuff in order to make the subsequent revenge killings as satisfying a possible. This America shot, Phillipines produced film is sleazy explotation, but shot with soom real sheen. **1/2

The Color of Pomegranates (1969)

 Armenian writer/director Sergi Parajanov's treatment of the life of the 18th century poet and musican Sayat-Nova is so abstract, that Soviet censors wouldn't let him advertise it as a bio-pic. Abstract and intensely visual the movie is a kind of visual poem that can't really be done justice in words, it is worth seeking out at least clips of online, in order to understand just how unconventional this film is. There are only bits of biography you can suss out in the film, but you come away with a real sense of the person even as you learn few facts about the man. I suspect this movie will benefit from repeat viewing. ***

Spin Me Round (2022)

 As of this writting it's been less then an hour since I learned of the passing of this films co writer and director Jeff Beana. I just watched 'Spin Me Round' on Monday night. Alison Brie is a manager at a chain Italian restaurant in Bakersfield California who is selected to participate in a company retreat in Italy. Once there she quickly finds things kind of off with both the retreat its self and with the odd assortment of Tuscon Grove employees she is more or less stuck with. A quirky, kinda mystery with some good payoffs. The cast is loaded with a kind of stock company of players Beana had accumulated over the years, including Brie, Debby Ryan, Molly Shannon and his wife/ co writer Aubrey Plaza. I really enjoyed this, Beana certainly had a unique style of dry humor and unusual subject manner in his storytelling; I'm sad we won't be hearing his unique voice anymore. ***

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

 Andew Garfield is a charmastic slacker living in his rent overdue Los Angeles apartment in 2011 (why set this in 2011 I don't know). He hits to off one night with neighbor Riley Keough, but when he goes to visit here the next day finds her apartment empty. As Garfield searches for her he interacts with various charactery characters and becomes increasingly enmesshed in improbable conspiracy theories, at least some of which turn out to be true. He also completes a nice arc leading to greater self reliance. There is an awful lot going on in this movie, both on the surface and in subtext, but to me it never felt like they were trying to do too much, which is no easy feet. ***

Tough Guy's Don't Dance (1987)

 'Tough Guy's Don't Dance' is the subject of arguably the greatest episode of the YouTube series 'Welcome to the Basement'. I tried to read the book a number of years ago but didn't finish; perhaps I'll give it another chance. Novelist Norman Mailer adapted and directed  his own novel for Cannon Pictures, who in the 80's were open to just about anything. It is a Cape Code set neo-noir with lots of eccentric characters and odd directing choices. A gonzo kind of movie held together by lead Ryan O'Neal playing it straight while those around him turn the melodrama up to 11. I would rewatch this. **1/2