Last Movie Watched.... The Xenforo Edition

In the book Rubish!, archeologists search through landfills to learn about American society. In 1973 there was a beef shortage in the US that lasted about 6 months. It was big news at the time. When archeologists look at this period, they found out that people were throwing away 9% of the meat bought instead of the more normal 1%. It seems like when the shortage hit the news, people that could afford it bought a lot of meat that couldn't be stored for a long time and went bad and was thrown away.

 

These weren't rubbish heaps around Three MIle Island or something like that, where the power went out for a week or ten days, thawing all the freezers, were they ?

 

According to the book, the project started in Arizona, and this was one of the early findings, so I assume they were digging there.

And you made me stop a YouTube video so I could open a book made of paper like I was in Victorian England or something. What a disturbing experience.

 

It just strikes me that there are other possible explanations besides hoarding. Meats do get recalled and destroyed for example...

 

This is meat in the package so the dates can be checked, and by the context of the things around them they knew this was household garbage and not supermarket / factory garbage.

 

May Flowers #8

The Blue Dahlia ~ G. Marshall

Johnny returns from a tour of duty to find his wife partying and unfaithful. He threatens her a bit, but leaves his gun behind and heads out into the rain where he's picked up by a beautiful woman who drives him out along the Malibu coast for a night. Unfortunately, the next morning his wife is found dead, the police are looking for him, and Johnny must try to find the real killer.

The film follows a lot of noir tropes, night clubs, secret hideouts in the LA woods, etc. Except instead of a hardened detective, Johnny (Alan Ladd) is a navy pilot and kind of a stiff. All the twists and turns could have still been okay, but the ending is terrible nonsense with a comically bad villain death. Apparently, the original ending was rejected and caused a major issue with Raymond Chandler.

 

One of four noirs that Ladd shared with Veronica Lake. Famously Ladd is one of the few leading men that Lake got along with. Almost every other guy she was paired with for her high-profile films had nothing good to say about her. Both also struggled with alcoholism and both died at the age of fifty.

 

More crucially, a man who needed to learn how to act.

Always been my opinion that Raft was an awful actor - like someone trapped in a dream being had by Paulie Galtierie in the Sopranos...

 

Joel McCrea said that one movie a lifetime with Veronica Lake was enough for any man!

On the Lake/ Ladd thing. I re-watched The Glass Key a few years ago, having tried to figure out what movie it was that I was remembering a scene from for years and years, and then realized it was Veronica Lake. In any case - wondering if anyone else found that plot nearly impossible to follow??

 

So Dark the Night (1946)
Dir. Joseph H. Lewis



Parisian police detective Henri Cassin is sent on a much needed vacation to the countryside. The rural inn that is hosting him is run by husband and wife Pierre and Madame Michaud. The Michauds have a daughter, Nanette, who is familiar with Cassin's reputation as a well-known police detective. She is drawn to Henri, in spite of the age difference between the two and in spite of the fact that she is in fact already engaged to be married, to local farmer Léon. During his stay Cassin develops feelings of his own for Nanette, though eventually his vacation turns into something altogether different, when both Nanette and Léon disappear and the country police commissioner, not used to such complicated missing persons cases, asks for Cassin's help.

Noirish mystery thriller. Not entirely convincing from my point of view, starts out pretty slow, even for a feature that is only seventy minutes long, and then devolves into increasingly less believable plot developments in the second half. Decent lead performance by Steven Geray. Perhaps also somewhat noteworthy for being one of the earlier examples of a certain trope.

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Namely the amnesiac/split personality detective being the killer who thus spends much of the movie investigating his own crimes.

 

May Flowers #9

Daisies ~ V. Chytilova

Two young women decide the world is spoiled, so they'll act like spoiled brats too. They then run around like destructive monsters. There is a fair amount of experimental film techniques used throughout. Visually, the scissor fight scene is really cool. There are some clear feminist and anti-war themes that are interesting, and I would probably understand better if I was familiar with Soviet influence of Czechia at the time. While I appreciate the experimentation and sentiment, there's an aspect to the New Wave anti-narrative structure that gets a bit tedious, and the film feels a bit of a drag even though it's only 80 min.

 

No Other Choice (2025)
Dir. Park Chan-wook



Man-su finds himself being sacked from his job at a paper factory shortly after the company is taken over by Americans and they promptly let go of 20% of the work force. For Man-su, working in the paper industry is the only thing he knows. At first, in spite of being rattled emotionally, him and his wife still assume he will find a new job within months. When over a year later he still finds himself unemployed, the family is in financial dire straits. Even with his wife Miri taking on a part-time job, they are burning through his severance package so quickly that soon they will have no choice but to sell their home. A particularly painful prospect for Man-su, as the house in question had once belonged to his parents and buying back the home he grew up in was a point of pride. One he might now have to relinquish. With all of his job interviews going nowhere and jobs in the paper industry becoming ever more scarce, Man-su's desperation eventually causes him to consider very extreme measures to aid his job hunt.

A entertaining dark comedy/dramedy by Park Chan-wook. The man has been mining a very rich vein of inspiration at least since The Handmaiden and this definitely is a continuation of it. Park is both a technically astute and inventive director, this is once again a feature filled with beautiful shot creation. The blocking, the way he fills his frame, the camera movements, ... Like in Decision to Leave, this features a few very inventive crane shots, but the big movements aren't the only ones where he shines. Just look at what he does with a scene where a character is merely handing another a mug of beer. Or two separate ways in which he portrays a phone conversation (or non-conversation) on the screen. One of the rare modern film-makers whose visual style is so rich that you realize how creatively anemic 90% of the audiovisual entertainment you otherwise watch is. I would rank this slightly behind Decision to Leave, just because that was a perfect marriage of writing and style. I would say that the screenplay here - based on the Donald E. Westlake novel The Ax - is much more reminiscent of a satire à la Parasite and less purely poetic than his previous effort. Lee Byung-hun (I have been a fan since his great lead performance in I Saw the Devil) and Son Ye-jin are both great as the co-leads, the husband and wife pairing of Man-su and Miri. Warmly recommended.

 

Hell's Angels (1930)

Two brothers can hardly be less alike. Roy is dependable, honorable to a fault, and is taking his time with the love of his life, the demure Helen. Monte enjoys his drink, is very experienced in getting out when the getting's good, and has first hand knowledge of how undemure Helen actually is. Yet they both somehow end up in the Royal Flying Corps, Roy because it's such an Oxford thing to do and Monte because he got caught up in a kissing booth recruitment center. They cut their teeth defending England from zeppelins, unknowingly crossing paths with their pre-war Oxford pal Karl. Soon enough they are in France, where Monte's cowardice and PTSD combine to make him an unreliable flyer. He has a chance to redeem himself when he and Roy go on a suicide mission - bombing an ammo dump by themselves in a captured German bomber.

Famed for the fantastical aerial combat with dozens of biplanes all swirling in the sky while Howard Hughes himself is among them directing. Some of the spinning and tumbling was just unbelievable. One of the stunts was rejected by the pilot so Hughes himself did it, resulting in a crash and a cracked skull. Beyond the stunts, the flying was also expertly blocked as a storytelling device. I don't think any air combat film has matched it since. I was less interested in the romance half of the plot which stretched the movie over two hours and introduced competing themes. Still, I thought Jean Harlow was convincing as the two-faced object of everyone's desire. In the Pre-Code era when a woman says "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" she means it.

You can tell this was made at the end of the silent film era, with some stilted readings and less naturalistic acting. There was a scene at the end that, if it was written and directed with the knowledge of 5 or 10 years later, could have been heartbreaking but as it is is overwrought and overlong and unfortunately loses its power.

 

May Flowers #10

Cosmos ~ A. Żuławski

Two guys board rooms in a house. They along with everyone else are insane, maybe? Weird stuff ensues. There's probably a metaphor somewhere in here, but good luck finding it. It's mostly just actors reciting bits of existential philosophy that initial sounds a little cool, but really goes nowhere in the incomprehensible narrative. It looks great. The shots are dynamic and the locations scenic, but it's trying too hard to be deep.

Edit: One Letterboxd review suggests that Żuławski was parodying pretentious art-house films. If so, bravo!

 

Wings (1927)

There are certain things that are important to young men in well-off small town America. Who your girl is. What you ride. Your reputation among the schoolmates. But it is 1917 and rivals Jack and David will be taken away from that world. As part of the educated hot-rod set they both sign up for the Army Air Service. Being billeted together at first stokes their animosity, but soon enough they learn to value each other's bravery and then grow to be fast friends. Both demonstrate exceptional skill at piloting, not only surviving the incredible odds but gaining notoriety for their successes. But the big push of 1918 is upon them, and David suddenly has a serious sense of dread.

Wings invented the visual language of air combat on film, and did in a way that is still as dizzying and harrowing as anything done afterwards. It did things that even a century on, in an era of portable cameras, drones, and CGI, has not been equaled or even attempted. They spared no expense in designing the scene under the air war either, with kilometers of trenches and shell craters crawled over by thousands of soldiers and a dozen tanks recreating the Battle of Saint-Mihiel. The technical inventiveness didn't end with the scenes of battle - one of the great dolly scenes in all film takes place in a Paris nightclub as the camera glides over the tables of partygoers. Beyond all that, this is one of the great war movies full stop

The original plot was re-written to be a vehicle for the top-billed Clara Bow, and frankly I think she was the worst thing about the movie. She exemplified the hyper-exaggerated motion and emoting of the era of film, and not only is it hopelessly dated now, it wasn't necessary then. The characters of David and David's family showed you didn't need that kind of performance to work in a silent film, and the most powerful moments in the film revolve around them.

 

Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)
Dir. Lee Cronin



Charlie and Larissa Cannon and their family, daughter Katie and son Sebastián live and work in Cairo, Charlie as a TV reporter, Larissa as a nurse. Their life changes forever when Katie is kidnapped from their backyard. The local authorities never manage to track down the missing child. Eight years later, Charlie and Larissa live in Albuquerque, where Charlie now works for a local TV affiliate. The family never got over losing their eldest child under strange circumstances, though their family unit has now been added to with youngest daughter Maud. To their shock, state department authorities inform them that Katie has been found, alive. Though the circumstances of her being saved are bizarre: Katie was found inside an authentic Egyptian sarcophagus, showing signs of malnutrition and abuse, the sarcophagus itself recovered at the site of a plane crash. Katie, showing physical signs of years of abuse and in a locked-in state mentality, is brought back home. Where it is slowly revealed that her behavior and physical state cannot solely be explained as the result of years of abuse by her still unknown captors.

Lee Cronin did the rather good Evil Dead sequel Evil Dead Rise, though I still did sigh a bit seeing the official title of this film actually includes his name. I found myself enjoying this a lot, especially the opening 70 or so minutes. If it has a flaw, it's a middle section that is a bit too long. At 130+ minutes, I think they could have easily cut 15-20 minutes of this thing to come to a leaner runtime, without losing much of substance. But it's not the worst take on the Mummy trope I have seen, and the central family dynamic works. Jack Reynor especially is good - still bummed we never got that third season of Strange Angel - and also enjoyed May Calamawy as the sympathetic Egyptian police detective. Does not entirely stick the landing for me, though that wasn't enough to really hurt my general enjoyment of this flick too much.

 

Wandering Ginza Butterfly II: She-Cat Gambler ~ Yamaguchi K.

Only indirectly linked to the first, through Meiko Kaji's Nami "The Red Cherry Blossom" and its focus on yakuza activities in Ginza, this sequel sees Nami gambling cards instead of playing pool in search of the cheater who killed her gambler father 13 years ago. Like the first movie, she teams up with a hustler (Sonny Chiba) trying to get out from under the yakuza syndicate's control of vice. This one has a pretty great climax that clearly inspired Tarantino's Crazy 88's scene from Kill Bill. It's not narratively brilliant or anything, though.

 

May Flowers #11

Pale Flower ~ Shinoda M.

Muraki freshly released from prison for murder returns to the gambling dens and runs into an enigmatic thrill-seeker, Saeko, and falls for her. Their shared nihilism drives him to dangerous places in the yakuza underworld.

It's probably unfair to She-Cat Gambler to watch this the following day, because this is so much better in comparison. The direction is terrific with tremendous shots throughout and the black and white cinematography uses light and shadow to great effect. It has a nice blend of noir and New Wave existentialism. A crazy dream sequence and the climactic scene at the end are coolly done.

 

The Dawn Patrol (1938)

It is 1915 and England is on the back foot. To help the ground situation, 59 Squadron has to fly missions attacking enemy logistics or strafing trenches, but staying low makes them sitting ducks for German flyers, especially when von Richter's crack unit shows up opposite them. The flight commander is forced to send wave after wave of green, useless recruits into the sky never to return. As the weeks pass, the more things change the more they stay the same. But then Errol Flynn is told to pick a pilot for a suicide mission of vast importance. There's only one man he can chose.

Hard to fault the powerhouse cast of Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, and David Niven who were all excellent. Made in response to a looming second world war, it's anti-war message of futility and waste probably had a lot of resonance with the audience at the time. But it feels ham-handed these days, with the dialogue and symbolism all being rather obvious. A remake of the 1930 movie of the same name, this used all the distant air combat footage of the original and remade the close-up scenes using inferior techniques.

 

The Sky Crawlers [スカイ・クロラ] (2008)

When replacement pilot Yūichi Kannami lands at his new airbase, he finds very little activity. No other airplanes are visible, nor people either. The anti-aircraft guns are rusted and weeded over. He finds out he is one of only four pilots. But he gets into a dogfight with two enemy aircraft on his first flight. There is war, of a sort. Two private companies enact a never-ending conflict, one that doesn't touch regular people except on the news. Kannami was engineered for his job, but all he knows is fighting. He has to learn about being a person from scratch. Like last time.

I saw this a long time ago, and wanted to revisit it as it is partially a take on the theme of The Dawn Patrol where the repetition of loss and replacement is taken to a sci-fi extreme. But it's way deeper than that, touching on many different issues of war and purpose. In a sense, they are turning around the Laurence Binyon's verse of World War I poetry "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old" by making the soldiers live as children forever, dividing them from society at a profound level. It a surprisingly slow movie, but I loved that about it. You don't get enough to understand this alternate world, but I got enough to feel it really deeply. Directed by Mamoru Oshii, and it has that fluidity of human movement and eye for detail he is known for. And the flight scenes were jaw-dropping.

 

The Eliminator (2004)

I never knew underground powerboat races were a thing, but I guess I was wrong. Former cop and former legit racer Dakota Varley (what a hopelessly terribly name) enters and wins, being one of the few to avoid the shocking number of fiery explosions. But never trust Michael Rooker to run a straight underground powerboat race. Instead of the cash prize, he gives Dakota a knock-out drug. Dakota and 7 others wake up on an island. A bunch of rich bastards picked each one to be the ultimate survivalist - they have to survive the island, each other, and a nightly sweep by soldiers armed with toy-level night-vision goggles. The last one alive will get off the island and $10 million. But never trust Michael Rooker to run a straight murder game.

The director was clearly influenced by the cheap syndicated TV shows of the time, and tried to overmatch their quantity of shaky cam, blurry choppy slow motion, and quick cuts. He quite successfully induced a headache in this viewer. The setup didn't make sense, events did not flow in a believable manner, the special effects were tragic, and the acting was uniformly bad. Even the title doesn't make sense because no one performed the role of eliminator. I declare this not a Most Dangerous Game movie because it doesn't have any of the themes common to the genre and because I don't want this to be the 50th such movie I've seen.

The only saving grace is Bas Rutten. He clearly had a non-stop blast doing this movie.