This review may contain spoilers.

A pleasant surprise. Never would have expected a David Lean screwball comedy to be such a delight, but I had a blast watching this. The choice to cover the ghost(s) with green clothing and makeup and then bathing them in a faint glow is quite beautiful and effective. Pretty impressive special effects for the time, and fitting with the mood of the film better than would a more haunting double exposure ghostly appearance.

Apparently Noel Coward was unhappy (very unhappy) with the changed ending, but I prefer Lean's take on this. Rex Harrison's Charles is so smug and unlikable; I liked watching him get his comeuppance, and it makes for a fun final shot.

A sexy, vibe-y Spaghetti Western from Monte Hellman. Soft-hearted gunslinger Fabio Testi is spared from the noose in exchange for his services to kill hard-headed Warren Oates, whose self-proclaimed shithole homestead stands in the way of the railroad's plans and thus preventing their pockets from getting fatter. Two problems: Oates and Testi end up actually liking each other, but even more than that Testi also takes a liking to his hot young wife Jenny Agutter. So Testi decides not to kill Oates, although Agutter almost does, forcing her and Testi to flee while Oates goes after them.

This makes it sound a lot more action-packed than it actually is. Most of the time is spent with the two leading men iring each other (even as Oates treats his wife like chattel) or watching Testi and Agutter make sweet sensual love.

The shooting and killing occur when Oates's brothers come looking for Testi, who warns them not to fuck with him and he doesn't want to kill them, but they seem to all have a death wish. So, we get shootouts. It is a Western, after all.

It's not without its flaws. Testi is handsome and convincing as a confident gunslinger, but his performance feels a bit stilted, robotic. (Oates is predictably fantastic.) The music stands out for being dreadfully bad. There's a random cameo from Sam Peckinpah, and while seeing him pop up on screen is a rare and curious occurrence, his character's one scene stops the film dead in its tracks and adds nothing to the story. (A similar character played by Saul Rubinek in Unforgiven is much more impactful.)

It does have a very satisfying final showdown and an excellent final shot, and as I reflect on the film I find I enjoyed more about it than not. But man, it really needed a better title.

An incredibly conservative and patriotic outlook on British culture and politics in the inter-war years. The patriarch of the family, Frank (played by Robert Newton) proclaims that governments don't create inequality (human nature does!) and volunteers as a strike breaker. His viewpoint is presented as being correct and we are supposed to sympathize with him. His son Reg has a political awakening due to a friend he meets, Sam, a young communist activist who gets berated by Reg's sister Vi for involving him in a protest. Sam grows older and becomes comfortable in his middle class capitalist milieu, and now that he's a respectable British capitalist citizen Vi decides he's marriage material. Fall in line, everyone, that's the message.

The Criterion disc includes a fascinating interview with 99-year old Ronald Neame, the film's cinematographer, in which he looks back on his collaboration with Lean and Coward. Surprisingly, he has this to say about this film:

"At the time, This Happy Breed was very successful, and it was very true of the period. It's just that... it's more old-fashioned than most of the films that I worked on. Some of the points of view don't really apply to today. There are films that still hold up: Great Expectations still holds up, I think Brief Encounter does. But there are several other films that I made that at the time we thought were important. But when I look at them now, I think 'Oh dear.'"

There are positives: Celia Johnson as the matriarch Ethel gives a magnificent performance, and her reconciliation scene with her daughter Queenie is very touching. Johnson was really a wonderful actress. There's also a masterful shot where the camera slowly and subtly peers around the corner as Frank and Ethel receive bad news, then observes the parents embracing and grieving before slowly pulling away to give them privacy. There are flashes of the talent Lean would later put to use on much better films.

Regardless, Neame is right. This is very old-fashioned and outdated, and it was a chore to sit through.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #6.

I honestly don't think I was high enough to properly appreciate this. It does seem way ahead of its time, but I think the most I got out of this was that the eyeball on the screen was looking back at me and the Rorschach test-like images caused some people in the audience to think an image of JFK was used in the film, which I found quite amusing.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #5.

A handsome man lovingly rubs his car spotless while Kenneth Anger pans over him making sure to keep his camera at crotch height. Slight, but enjoyable.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #4.

A found footage film featuring kinetic editing and putting the Kuleshov effect to good use, such as a man in a submarine looking through a periscope and coming across a beautiful woman seductively posing in a bikini followed comically by the launching of a torpedo, and jaw-dropping footage of a nuclear weapons test mushroom cloud followed by clever editing in which we see surfers and canoers struggling with the massive waves caused by the explosion.

Sometimes a movie comes along you've never heard of that just blows you away. This thrilling 12-minute short is one of those times. For me, a true revelation.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #3.

I found this insufferable. Fans of the Beatniks will likely find more value in this than I did. To me, it feels like a very early mumblecore film, but instead of dialogue we get Jack Kerouac seemingly adlibbing over the edited footage to provide narration for what's transpiring, much of which involves discussions about poetry, religion and holiness, how smart the men are, and how inferior the women are. Could've sworn that was Delphine Seyrig, but she was credited as "Beltiane", only to find out later it was indeed Seyrig in her first movie role.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #2.

A young couple makes love and a volley of visual innuendos unfold across the screen. As the ion heats up we literally see a pot of boiling water and then a jackhammering sewing needle. The climax is followed by a dripping faucet. It's quite amusing. The voiceover is full of love and romance before the act, but turns into a bit of a disagreement after they have sex over the man's inability or unwillingness to keep a job. The woman has an enigmatic look in her eyes as the film ends, seemingly unsure if this relationship will last.

Avant-garde cinema course, film #1.

This certainly seemed like an appropriate place to begin tonight. I first watched this just a couple months ago, now I got the chance to see it with an audience. Not surprisingly, this is quite the crowd pleaser and elicited plenty of discussion afterward. The fluidity of the camera movements and the beauty of the images were highlighted even more on the big screen, though the score felt more intrusive this time around. This would likely work even better if projected completely silent as initially released.

While not a great film, I was mostly invested in this until the end, when that abysmal climactic scene and howler of a final shot soured me on the whole thing. I still think this is an overall effective display of how addiction and the unwillingness to confront grief, allowing it to simmer until it explodes, can lead to drastic negative consequences.

Fraser's performance really is that good. His exclamation that "I need to know that I have done one right thing with my life!" is delivered with such desperation and the emotion of it caught me off guard, capping off probably the best scene in the film.

It seems many people had an issue with the representation of obesity here, but I didn't see this as fatphobic. Everyone in the film has a damaging coping mechanism, for which Charlie it's overeating, for Liz it's enabling, for his ex-wife it's alcohol, etc. It's a collection of people who refuse help from anyone, choosing to repress and smother their pain. For many of the characters it's apparently too late to fix, as expressed most obviously in Charlie's morbid obesity in which by the time we meet him his lifestyle has stressed his body beyond repair. His insistence on the goodness of people and repetitive scenes of him trying to prevent his daughter from going down the same self-destructive path he took becomes a little overbearing, but the themes resonate strongly nonetheless. Some scenes really needed to be trimmed or cut completely; there are too many of Charlie saying that people are amazing and declaring the importance of honesty. Then comes the most ridiculous ending in recent cinema history. Am I really keeping this at 3 stars? I guess I am.

Shout out though to being of the few films I can think of that mentions radiology, even in ing.

Warren Oates plays a man who vows to never speak another word or drink another drop of alcohol until he wins the Cockfighting Championship. You see, a couple years ago he spouted his big mouth off and bet his prized chicken in a hotel room cockfight for a few bucks. That chicken died in the meaningless fight, and with that so did his medal winning hopes. So, no more talking, no more booze, and his girlfriend must sit at home and wait for him to complete his Odyssean quest.

It's one of those character studies all about a man's pride and ego and an existential longing to discover meaning and purpose in his life. It feels all the more ridiculous here because his purpose is attempting to become the best cockfighting trainer in all the land, which seems like such a preposterous goal. I'm not sure if Monte Hellman presents it as being ridiculous or if I'm just projecting my own feelings onto the images, although a hold-up scene where the robbers wear comical masks, a character literally hides his money under dead chickens in a bathtub, and everyone is made to take off their pants makes me lean toward this being more on the side of farcical. Either way, there is an uncomfortable amount of actual cockfighting including the mutilation and death of birds for the sake of art, and it's kind of hard to forgive for that. I still liked it more than I thought I would, almost certainly due to the fact that Oates and Stanton just elevate any movie they're in.

Typically movies that depend on frequent narration provided by the main character's thoughts can become tiresome, but in this case it's framed as a confession from Laura to her husband Fred, a confession she can only make in her mind and not profess out loud for fear of hurting Fred and threatening their marriage. But also, as she its to herself, she wants to go through the details of those past few weeks to them and cherish them for herself ("I want to every minute, always, always to the end of my days"). This is further portrayed through a cyclical narrative structure -- we see the interrupted final goodbye of an illicit affair, a gentle touch on the shoulder, and a rush outside toward a train. It's then through Laura's recollections over the next 80 minutes that we learn how we arrived at this point, and what those gestures meant.

Along with outstanding performances from Trevor Howard and particularly Celia Johnson, who expresses so much emotion through her eyes, the depiction of an unconsummated extramarital affair unfolds with such empathy and understanding. Laura's husband is shown to be a good man, an apparent loving father and husband, who nevertheless seems to have little in common with his wife. She prefers to listen to music, but he wants to turn the volume down and focus on his crossword, which she has little interest in. There's certainly love and comfort in their relationship, but the ion, if it ever existed, is nowhere to be found.

We see none of Alec's home life, with the only information provided being the Laura's recollections of what he told her. But we get the sense his is a similar situation. The gradual connection and developing attraction of the two leads, rather than the "love at first sight" or meet cute scenarios far more common in films, feels so uncharacteristically realistic, and the fact that it builds so seamlessly in such a short runtime is especially impressive.

Yet, we know it's doomed from the start. We've seen their parting goodbyes. And their brief affair is not completely romanticized. We see Laura wracked with guilt and conflicting emotions, wanting both to engage in the ionate conversations and boat rides and walks with Alec as well as to maintain her happy(-ish) home. To keep up the secret affair going, she begins telling small little lies, which soon become bigger lies when she runs into old acquaintances. They also get caught just prior to consummating the affair, and Alec has to lie to his friend, who of course sees right through it. You can't have it both ways. They either must choose each other, or choose to return to their families. As much as they'd love to publicly frolic carefree like the young couple leaving the refreshment room and running along behind them as they come to with the inevitable end of their affair, there can be no happily ever after for them.

Would make a great double feature with In the Mood for Love.

A tale of two films. The action scenes are remarkably impressive and believable, made all the more surprising when shown footage on the short documentary extras of the relatively small 4 foot deep tank they filmed many of the water scenes in. There's a bombing of a house during the Plymouth Blitz that is truly terrifying, with the fear of "Will the next one drop on us?" followed by the chaos of being inside the house as it gets blown up. It all feels quite real. By contrast, the domestic elements of the film seen in flashback are drab and boring. I reckon that's part of the point of Noel Coward's script, that these are ordinary men who in better circumstances would be living ordinary, boring lives, however duty has called them away from their domestic bliss. Unfortunately, we never really get to follow any characters' story long enough (not even the ship's captain, played by Coward himself) to develop any real connection. Each flashback is essentially a variation on the same theme: The sailors wish they could stay on land longer to spend time with their families, and the women married to them lament that they have to share their love for their husbands with the men's love for their ship. It gets a bit tiring.

It is a stirring piece of propaganda that was almost certainly a welcome boost of hope for the British as they faced uncertain times in the face of German attacks on their homeland in WWII, and was apparently a major success at the time. It doesn't hold up as well today. But it did give David Lean his big break in directing, and a legendary career was launched.

What a wild, fun, intense ride this is. An itted inspiration for Parasite by Bong Joon-ho, the themes and several plot devices are indeed similar, but The Housemaid is batshit crazy and even more unnerving.

The Kim family have worked themselves to the bone to buy a nice 2-story house and acquire their material goods, and they will do anything to hold onto their status and reputation. When they hire an unhinged housemaid who upends their life, they endure escalating humiliation and destruction of their home life, while hiding the husband's affair in an attempt to maintain outward appearances of a respectable, upper middle class family. After a rather calm and subdued opening 30 minutes, the film continually ramps up the tension as the housemaid becomes more possessive and more dangerous. A piano and a set of stairs, signifying wealth and privilege but which become objects of terror for the Kim family, play a key role throughout the film -- along with a ubiquitous bottle of rat poison which looms over the entirety of the film, reminiscent of Hitchcock's "bomb under the table" analogy.

It's totally nuts and over the top, and I just loved it. I wish more of these older Korean films were more readily available. According to the essay included in the release, celluloid from many Korean films of the 50s-70s were repurposed for use in farmers' hats (!!) and later to extract silver, and thus an inordinate amount of older Korean films are forever lost. Fortunately, even with 2 severely damaged reels we are fortunate that The Housemaid survived.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Despite the introduction of new emotions, including a strong characterization of Anxiety and a great voice acting performance by Maya Hawke, this really does feel like a retread of the first film. Joy and Sadness are exiled into the outer realm again, this time ed with the rest of the Fab Five, as they need to overcome obstacles to make it back to Headquarters and balance the emotions of their girl Riley. Bing Bong is replaced by the inferior Pouchy. The laughs are fewer, and the emotional resonance is a bit dulled. This is all compared to the original film, which is excellent, and perhaps watching the sequel immediately after highlights its weaknesses a little more brightly. Because objectively, this is not a bad film. It's just not nearly on the level of the first.

A few aspects absolutely nailed the mark, however. The depiction of Riley's first panic attack was intense and the reactions of her friends, the empathy, comforting , and love given to Riley despite her shunning of them during the hockey camp, was truly touching and the moment that felt emotionally on par with the original. Joy's idea of repressing bad memories and only keeping the good ones obviously foreshadowed the revelation at the end, but regardless it rang true to how people (teenagers, adults, everyone) need to hold onto bad memories as lessons to learn from and refrain from repressing them, and is one of the better depictions of this I can think of in film.

I still can't help feeling overall underwhelmed by Inside Out 2 as a whole, which may just be due to the overwhelming artistic achievement of Inside Out that is simply difficult to match.

Watched on Sunday March 23, 2025.

Less a review and more a journal entry.

Both my therapist and my girlfriend's therapist independently suggested (they don't know each other) watching this movie, clearly a sign from the combined movie-therapy gods, and thus a rewatch was in order.

As much as I enjoying this in theaters when it was first released, I know I didn't take to heart the message of the film as intended at that time. After a few family tragedies as a youngster I essentially repressed negative emotions in favor of what I saw as a more intellectual, rational outlook on life. Whoops. Growing into a somewhat emotionless robot as an adult probably wasn't ideal. But over the past 7 years or so I've worked on understanding, embracing, and expressing how I'm feeling. That is to say, in particular, understanding the importance of sadness and learning how to cope with and grow from the experience of it, rather than placing Sadness in a circle and putting it on permanent timeout.

It may be a message aimed at kids, but perhaps also for emotionally stunted adults. But hey, I've gotten better! I can truly understand the message now!

One aspect I thought was pretty profound was how entering someone's world of sadness, simply to listen and express empathy, is so important, and definitely a lesson I was never taught growing up. I was always taught to fix things, but sometimes there's nothing to fix. You just have to be there for someone and show you care. This is most obvious in that final emotional scene when Riley returns home and is embraced by her parents (and the first mixed core memory is created), but probably first really becomes apparent in the film when Sadness sits next to and consoles Bing Bong in long-term memory. Bing Bong decides to continue the journey to bring Sadness and Joy back to Headquarters, and Joy is flabbergasted. "How did you do that?" Empathy, that's all.

Watched on Friday March 21, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

I'm always between this and Wings of Desire when it comes to my favorite Wenders film, and it seems to always be whichever one I more recently watched. But this is the first time I've had the opportunity to see one of them on the big screen, followed by a fascinating post-film discussion. Like me, a few others in the audience had first seen this in their early 20s, only to have a decidedly different opinion of Travis's character, the ending, and the overall feeling of the movie as whole seeing it 10, 20, or 30 years later.

When I first saw this, it appeared to me like a tragic story of star-crossed lovers. Travis, while clearly flawed, went through a rather positive character arc where he makes amends for his past deeds, bringing together son and mother for a grand reunion while he selflessly removes himself from the picture to make their lives better and more peaceful.

And certainly, this is how Travis sees his own story. But every time I've seen this I've come to see Travis in a more and more negative light. His story is still told with great empathy, and Harry Dean Stanton's performance is one for the ages. (The amount of emotion he can display with his eyes alone!) But my goodness, he is really a shitty person, a whirlwind of bad juju who wreaks havoc among everyone in his vicinity. Even the ending, in which mother and son are reunited, appears more and more like another awful thing Travis has done. Jane herself says she isn't able to give Hunter what he needs, that she didn't want to use him "to fill up [her] emptiness". Hunter had a strong adopted nuclear family, and he's now been ripped away from them. Having been abandoned by his parents when he was too young to them, he has now been abandoned by his father (again) and almost certainly will be abandoned by his mother (again) in the future, but now with memories of abandonment. Walt and Anne's relationship will be tested, and even if Hunter returns to LA to live with them the emotional damage done will make everyone's life harder. Travis really fucked up.

That said, the final act in Houston is brilliant. I don't feel like I'm ever prepared for the emotional gut punch of that final scene between Travis and Jane, separated by a glass barrier. All of the pain of their tumultuous relationship is brought back from hidden depths into plain view, the love they have for each other still as strong as ever, and the knowledge that they are simply incompatible. Probably in large part due to Travis. He can't help his self-destructive tendencies, and he brings everyone else down with him. Some of his confessions of how he treated Jane are truly horrific. And should you think he's changed, when he first sees her again his jealousy and rage emerge almost immediately, as he accuses her of sleeping with customers for extra money outside of work. That angry, controlling, abusive man is still there.

Something I caught this showing that I don't making note of before is that when Travis is showing Hunter the family photos he mentions his dad dying "in that car" 2 years after the photo was taken. Later, he describes his father's domineering control over his mother, and how his mother's life was restricted by her father. Travis's behavior is learned from his father, and he can't shake it. I wonder if Walt (who appears to be emotionally balanced and a good husband and father) is his younger brother, perhaps still young when their father died, and thus was not witness to and not shaped by their father's bad example.

The movie becomes sadder and sadder every time I see it (also mentioned by several others in the post-film discussion), but remains a masterpiece. One of my all-time favorites.

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

I greatly enjoyed this, even if I it it's a total mess. Bong tries to hit too many notes at once instead of tightly focusing on a couple key themes. The concepts introduced in the beginning of the film involving identity and exploitation of employees, in particular as seen through the character of Mickey who is literally labeled an Expendable worker, should have remained the primary focus of social commentary. Instead we get asides into romantic subplots (including an almost completely pointless side character, Kai, and her especially pointless inclusion into a love quadrangle), an obvious Trump parody (performed excellently by Ruffalo, but the shtick wears thin as the film goes on), and a shift in focus toward animal cruelty and white Christian imperialism as the film careens toward the end. It's not all terrible, but it's terribly unfocused and the pacing suffers in the final act. Still, it's solidly entertaining and fun throughout. The Creepers are adorable, Pattinson's performances are excellent, it's visually creative, and it made me laugh on multiple occasions.

The parallels with Italian neorealism are evident here, and if the planned project of several films to be produced by the Secretariat of Public Education had come to fruition perhaps we would have associated neorealism with Mexican cinema. Alas, this was the only film produced as part of the project, and after a short theatrical release in 1936-37 wasn't widely available until fairly recently.

I haven't seen Visconti's La Terra Trema, with which this apparently shares many similarities, but the thrilling fish catching scene (my favorite of the film) sure looks a hell of a lot like the one in Stromboli which I believe also was shot utilizing the actual fishermen of the village. The dynamic camerawork and Silvestre Revueltas's searing score accentuate the choreography and teamwork involved, and the thrill of the work performed to perfection.

The political viewpoints expressed are blunt and direct, which is probably intentional as this was essentially a propaganda piece from the left wing government meant to educate and influence the public. Just in case we don't get the metaphor, that the villagers are as wrapped up in the exploitative capitalist net of the one-dimensional villainous merchant and politician in the way the fish are literally wrapped up and trapped in the fishing nets, we have a character explain it to the audience (to the characters in the film, and those in the theater seats) directly. It's heavy-handed... but I guess it's supposed to be.

Still, it's a little clunky at times. It's very clear this was shot with a silent camera and dubbed over. There are long sequences of the film which are supplemented entirely by the musical score, and then long sequences of the film supplied entirely by dialogue with no music. The acting by the non-professional actors works extremely well in scenes showcasing them working together, both in the fishing scenes and the unionizing scenes, but not so well in smaller, more personal emotional scenes like when Miro tries to express his helplessness in obtaining treatment for his sick son.

This is also likely colored by the fact that the Italian films which emerged a decade later used this premise to better effect, but I also need to that this was essentially breaking new ground. Is this the first neorealist film? It actually may be. And that's pretty damn impressive.