"Accomplishments"In theaters: I, at first, feared that Steven Soderbergh's ghost story, Presence, would make me queasy. The Shaw-Scope fish-eye camera requires a few minutes to get used to, but is entirely motivated by being the ghost's point of view. It's this partial point of view that creates a lot a mystery and a lot of ambiguity when looking at the family that just moved into the haunted house. Whose spirit is it, and what does it need to do? The family has many ongoing problems it might latch onto, and our limited insight into things means we're not even sure what those problems are. They unfold slowly before us, or our questions are never fully answered. The solutions to the things that matter aren't necessarily difficult to divine, though surprises keep coming even for the more astute viewer. Though it has a central puzzle, Presence is perhaps more interested in style, which it carries off well.
David Tennant and Cush Jumbo are both quite good in the 2025 release of the Macbeth stage play, directed by Max Webster, but it's that direction that's the real star. The minimal set is a white square daring to be stained with blood, on which the characters shift from one scene to the other with lightning quick transitions, creating the headlong lung of the character into corruption. Macbeth is a character who never has time to think things through, who lets ambition take over and therefore makes mistakes he lives to regret. The tragedy was always one of Shakespeare's shortest, and at under two hours (short for plays on tape), it's a real whirlwind. One of our few breaks is a modern version of Elizabethan clowning, shocking in its text and breaking of the fourth wall, but to me acceptable (purists may not think so). Of course, nothing works if the two leads aren't as strong as they are. I kind of live for this Macbeth's back half impatience with his cronies, and I'm on board with a "pathetic" interpretation of Macbeth. It's more interesting than the unstoppable monster, and fits better the scenes where Lady Macbeth is the more obvious power in the house. On that account, I loved Jumbo in this, dressed all in white (also daring to be stained), and just as ambitious and ultimately, fragile as her husband. Very enjoyable.
At home: For the first 20 minutes of Flow, my similarly-colored cat Ash was riveted. When the big birds started showing up, he opted out. Or maybe 20 minutes is the limit of his attention span. Mine is much longer, and Flow kept it. In this surreal take on "The Incredible Journey", a cat and eventually some other animals find themselves adrift on the waters of a great and inexplicable flood. They survive, adapt, learn to live together on a small skiff, explore their new world (which has elements of the fantastical), and head for an elliptical ending that's up to interpretation. The rendering is sometimes more primitive than big studio pieces, but nevertheless beautiful, and the animal behavior is very well done. These adorable critters are at once realistic - no dialog, a lot of acting on instinct - and slightly personified - they can steer a boat! - but it's the former element that sticks with you, creating real tension when things start to go wrong. Ultimately, this is about mortality - perhaps humanity's absence is part of the theme - but I won't tell you how. Or just go with the flow, and decide for yourself.
I don't count Go West among Buster Keaton's best. The middle section, in which our diminutive star attempts to become a rather inept ranch hand is low on laughs and visually quite flat, like the arid valley it's set in. You may well be charmed by "Brown Eyes", the handsome cow who is his credited co-star (did City Slickers name this as one of its inspirations), who he spends most of his time bonding with or else trying to save from the slaughter-house. And yes, the cow is a highlight, but the sequences don't have the wit of the opening, nor the impressive insanity of the third act. Because as with every Keaton feature (and many silent comedies besides), Go West features a slam-bang, stunt-heavy, production number, in this case involving a bit of train action (predicting The General, out the next year) and hundreds of cattle in incongruous situations. I just feel there was a lot of waiting before we get to the good stuff.
Even in his silent, pre-war period, Ozu can be counted on to give us shots of chimneys, empty streets and cushions. Woman of Tokyo is a lot more serious than much of his more light-hearted 1930s output, prefiguring his post-war family dramas where modernity clashes with tradition. The nominal woman is a hard-working secretary by day, and a hostess and prostitute by night, in order to pay her brother's way through college. When rumors of this reach him (and even so, not completely), the aforementioned sets of values indeed clash. Propriety offended by practicality and self-sacrifice. Whether you think the film condemns her choices or defends them may well depend on your own opinion of sex workers. Which, given the context of 1930s Japan, will also decide whether you think Ozu is an old-fashioned moralist or a maverick ironist. I tend to this the latter, in both cases.
I initially had a hard time accepting Claudette Colbert as Cecil B. DeMille's scantily-clad 1934 version of Cleopatra, but eventually did. She has the striking features (if not the ethnicity, well, neither did Liz Taylor), but my experience with the petite comedienne seemed at odds with the unfolding tragedies (essentially a mash-up of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra, with the Shakespeare removed). But Colbert lends a coquettish humor to the Egyptian queen, and yet a steely resolve as she must seduce powerful, violent men who are more interested in war than in love - at the risk of falling into her own honey trap each time. Where the film succeeds is in how theatrically over the top it is. It features what has to be one of the most elaborate sex scenes in the history of cinema, and the very violent war sequences are like something out of Eisenstein. Huge, deep sets. Dozens of circus performers and dancers. Did I mention the skimpy costumes? I did? Okay, never mind then.
Claudette Colbert is stuck between two of her regular leading men - Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland - in The Gilded Lily, a depression-era romcom where she falls for the penniless man of her dreams only to find out that he's a rich aristocrat, so maybe he's not such a dreamboat. And it's also a friend zone fantasy where her best friend, not so secretly pining for her, has a legitimate shot, even in that market. Both romances are very cute, like the leading lady, but I do have a beef with the plotting. I suppose it's a sign of the times, but MacMurray using her situation to make headlines and then turning her into a songbird to monetize her fleeting celebrity is rather icky. It CAN be forgiven as an excuse for Colbert's comedy turn as an INEPT songbird and producing the most memorable sequence in the film. But her treatment still feels at odds with the romantic tone of the film, and in the end, I'm not sure either of these men deserve her.
Every man loves her, but it seems Claudette Colbert is doomed to be stuck between rather shitty men in most of her movies, and because Hollywood has to Hollywood, she'll wind up with one of them (usually the most famous) even if none at all would be preferable. I Met Him in Paris follows that formula and lies to us with its title besides (even if technically true). I suppose Paris is the most romantic location to put in a title, but the City of Lights itself is never seen, just relegated to a fancy hotel and restaurants, and most of the action takes place in Switzerland, giving the stars a chance to do a lot of winter sports. That's the core of the film, with lots of slapstick and actors who look like they're in physical danger. It's all much better than the romantic triangle (or square), but at least Colbert is in control at the end, not just in choosing who she'll end up with, but in pushing her choice to be their best (and therefore most acceptable) self. And look, films of this era always have the best comedy waiting staff, and that's true here too. Someone should make a documentary JUST ABOUT waiter/hotel clerk/porter roles in Hollywood's Golden Age - I'd watch it!
Fairly mature relationship notions in Skylark, where Claudette Colbert is an ignored, but still young wife to Ray Milland's advertising executive, and on their fairly disastrous 5th anniversary, starts a flirtation with Brian Aherne (Melvyn Douglas wasn't available, I guess) that takes her down a new path. Aherne may be a cad who habitually goes out with boring execs' bored wives, but he certainly has both Colbert and Milland's number, poking fun at men who are married to their jobs, and how adultery, once committed, becomes easier and easier. Though the Hollywood of this era likely wants to reinforce marriage values, Aherne's final summation may actually be correct. The novel and stage play this is based on shines through - though I don't expect Colbert's slapstick boat trip was in there - in the adult themes underneath the romcom fluff.
In the generically-titled No Time for Love, Claudette Colbert is a magazine photographer surrounded by effete men, whose world is turned upside down when she meets a brutish lout (frequent partner Fred MacMurray) while taking snaps of underground works. The decompression chamber they have to go through is almost a metaphor for this slowly equalizing, but blood-boiling relationship. Most interesting is the dream sequence that features, among others things, MacMurray in a superhero costume. I say he'd have made an excellent Captain Marvel had superhero movies been a thing back then beyond some frankly hokey serials. (As it turns out, he was C.C. Beck's inspiration for the Big Red Cheese's look, wow.) Some laughs otherwise, and I'm always impressed at how game Colbert is. There's a scene where the relationship literally drags her into the mud and she doesn't bat even one of her giant eyes. That sister of hers really needs a slap though.
From the World Cinema Project![Turks and Caicos Islands] The Syfy "original", Chupacabra: Dark Seas (AKA Chupacabra Terror) definitely feels like TV-strength fare, with its rubber-suit monster terrorizing people on a cruise ship filled with people who deserve their deaths, either for being stupid a-holes, or for general bad acting. The two bright spots are John Rhys-Davies (just off The Lord of the Rings) as the captain, and Giancarlo Esposito (pre-Breaking Bad) as the cryptid hunter who causes the situation. But the action lead and love interest (whose Tae Bo training doesn't come in useful enough) are pretty stiff B-stars, and the rest of the cast is pretty awful (or perhaps, stuntmen doing the best they can). The movie has a sense of humor about itself, so it's still fairly watchable. There's just little consistency in the direction (sometimes cool, sometimes remedial) and you'll probably be left wondering how the ship can stay afloat with all those plot holes running through it.
[Haiti] Kafou is actually a pretty great crime picture, from the point of view of low-level thugs tasked with a simple kidnap victim delivery. Doc and Zoe are given three rules and break them all, which in Haiti, might have superstitious power. It's a dark comedy that gets so dark, it turns into tragedy, and smoothly too. It's not even the only tonal shift in the film. Jasmuel Andri and Rolapthon Mercure are great in the lead roles, and I love the music too. I was so struck by this 51-minute wonder that if its later expansion (2024) - called Kidnapping Inc. - comes my way, I will gladly watch it. Same story, characters and actors, so it should be good. The 7-year gap between the director's two projects (not to mention Kafou taking two years) goes a long way to show how difficult it is to make a film in some areas, even when there's such evident talent there.
[Cayman Islands] If a film is financed by the Cayman Islands, does it mean it's an exercise in money laundering, or at least a tax haven? Because if it hadn't started life as an absurdist novel, the premise of A Hologram for the King might well lead you to think that's exactly how it got made. From the unappealing trailer, back in the day, it seemed like the Boomeriest Boomer flick ever. Top Boomer actor Tom Hanks goes to Saudi Arabia to show off hologram technology, meets a bunch of Muslim "zanies", and maybe has an unlikely romance while he's over there. A Boomer dream of luxury and ugly American tourism. But once you realize that it works like Kafka's The Castle and Becket's Waiting for Godot, it starts to take a turn for the better. In principle, a story about an arrested life and career manifesting as a waiting game out of the theatre of the absurd, and told in an expressionistic style, should be right down my alley. But while Hanks is good - bringing amusement and pathos - I still think it's hurt by not going 100% into the malaise. It ends too happily despite its anti-climax, and whether it gently mocks Saudi culture or glad-hands/dismisses its regime, I can't get totally on board. I liked it more than I thought I would, but it felt, perhaps by necessity, like a collection of random vignettes.
Books: I get that in his 1976 Target novelisation of Dotor Who and the Tenth Planet, Gerry Davis would advance the timeline from 1986 to 2000 (not 1996?), but weirdly, he also pushes Ben and Polly's time to the 1970s (and not even concurrent with the book release since Ben "just saw" 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun), which is rather strange. Regardless, this is an important story for the Doctor Who canon. It features the introduction of the Cybermen and includes the first regeneration. Davis sets up the First Doctor's frailty earlier in the novel than in the televised version, but changes a lot of the details of the actual event (nothing too egregious though). Where the book shines best is in its realization of the action beats (which, face it, were never very strong on TV given the production limits), and you come out of it liking Ben a lot more as a result.
RPGs: Still straddling two adventures this week in Torg Eternity. The players first finished the "possessed demon car" scenario with a good ol' burial, putting the spirits at rest, but this took longer than planned. On the one hand, their success against the cars attacking a small outpost made me throw a bit of a wrench in the works - one ghost left its damaged car and jumped into a truck filled with kids about to be evacuated, which made for a nice chase and fight against a vehicle filled with friendlies. On the other, the Freedom magician mishapped on a spell and attracted a Technodemon, which are very tough opponents (luckily, this was one of the ones from the previous Act who had depleted his Possibilities fighting a dragon, so he couldn't soak damage. But the players drove out of the last encounter driving a pristine Lambo... which they crashed in the very next act, without ever even using its turbo boost capability. Sigh. Then a new scenario begins, and it could be a campaign ender. Sent on a mission by the leader of all the Technodemons to stop the release of an entity that could reduce the planet's technological axiom to low levels (only the Living Land would benefit, really), the PCs almost got to the finale, but we had to stop there. In this case, they used intimidation to get around a couple of pointless fights, so they caught up from the time spent on a bonus fight in the previous act. Generally, nice fight strategies, which is how Torg should be.
Best bits: The Frankenstein jumps on the hood of the possessed car full of kids and plunges a sun-blade into the windshield, fritzing the invisible spirit driving, then grabs the wheel - from that position! - to swerve it away from obstacles. Amusingly, the Realm Runner used a Cosm card to turn one of the children into a willing servant (it's not grooming, we swear!) and had him drive him back to camp to get a vehicle armed with a heavy weapon to fight the Technodemon; he had filled the gas tank with sand to prevent re-possession, but you know those Tharkold vehicles - you can plug yourself in and it drinks your blood for power (of course, by the time he got back, the fight was over). The Monster Hunter shot an electric bullet in the demon's cybernetic eye, finally shocking it out (at which point, they butchered it). Against the "Ghost Rider" Lamborghini, the Monster Hunter lured it to a landmine he'd spotted, blowing it into the air; it self-repairs, but it gave them time for a prayer and a burial (in a landmine crater, of course). In the second scenario, a "best bit" that almost was had the Freedom magician drifting the Lambo into position so that it would expel an undead gospog that had gotten inside, out the door and under their other vehicle's wheels. Well, a mishap later and the car smashed into a mutated tree, yes, killing the gospog, but the cool car as well. Bonus points for role-playing this week, with several characters tapping into the domination/servility aspect of Tharkold (including the Realm Runner's dangerous fandom for President Volkov of Russia), as well as some amusing banter as they tried to communicate between the two cars.
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