December Films Update 1

10 films I watched earlier this year

****

1. Strange Darling (2024)

The film declares it is in six chapters then begins with chapter three. A woman is driving down a rural road, a man in a car chasing her. He shoots at her, driving her off the road. She flees into the woods. Eventually she comes across a house where the radio is playing loudly outside, a program about sasquatch. She knocks on the door to ask for help.

As the other chapters emerge, we learn that the man and the woman had met up to have sex, which included some complicated roleplay, the film concealing what they had agreed and what they had not. This is the point of the formal structure of the film, to start with we the audience assuming the woman is being victimised, then complicating the situation. The woman, it is later revealed, is notorious serial killer The Electric Lady. At one point she explains that she kills people because they appear as devils (the man is credited as The Demon, the woman as The Lady).

If I’m ambivalent about a striking film with strong ideas and an interesting formal structure it deliberately draws attention to, then perhaps it’s that I don’t know if it adds up to anything more than that. Which ought to be enough! Maybe because I am used to complex games like this in the literary world. Showing us the chapters out of order while informing us, and also some scenes without informing us, is done in the service of concealing and revealing who is the pursuer, who the ambusher, which of these violent people has the upper hand and what are their motivations. That’s fine, but it doesn’t shed any light on a damaged woman who sees devils and has to destroy them, or on a violent man and violence to women more generally. It engages with lies, deception and appearances, but they’re tertiary, hidden under the tension and violence on the screen.

Watch This: Formally interesting horror film with something to say about appearances and violence
Don’t Watch This: Mostly interesting because they tell you they’re hiding information

2. Pickup Alley aka Interpol (1957)

Charles Sturgis is an FBI agent on the trail of drug dealers. His sister is undercover and when she is incautious enough to speak loudly on the phone about her work she is strangled by the mysterious Frank McNally. McNally has a girlfriend Gina Borger (Anita Ekberg) who he sends to London to kill a rival gangster; she makes quite a mess of it and leaves clues behind. She heads of to Europe, with Sturgis using Interpol contacts to follow her.

McNally treats Borger worse and worse, which eventually will be his downfall. Before then he realises that Sturgis is following her and sets traps. Eventually Sturgis discovers the plan, which is that a ship’s captain has had a personal fridge delivered, the fridge containing heroin. Failing to stop it leads to a final confrontation on the docks in New York.

A bit too straightforward to be noir, trying to use the glamour of Europe to cover the lapses in the story. A few interesting actors – Sid James appears twice as the barman in McNally’s club that’s a front for his activities. On balance not an especially interesting 50s crime thriller.

Watch This: Crime thriller emphasising the complexities of chasing multinational criminals in the 1950s
Don’t Watch This: Melodramatic, confusing, very silly

3. Wicked (2024)

In the land of Oz the wicked witch of the west, Elphaba, has died. The good witch Glinda comes to Munchkinland where she is asked, what makes people wicked? She muses on this and remembers what happened in the past.

The governor’s wife had an affair with a mysterious traveling salesman who sold a mysterious green elixir. She gave birth to a green-skinned daughter, Elphaba, who has mysterious telekinetic powers. Some time later she joins her wheelchair-user sister Nessarose as Nessarose goes to Shiz University. There Galinda Upland, a pinkly-dressed, popular student who wants to join the sorcery seminars of Madame Morrible, takes against her, even before a demonstration of Elphaba’s powers has Madame Morrible take her on.

Galinda and Elphaba are made to room together, which has them clash (Galinda’s clothes etc take up almost all the space). Prince Fiyero arrives at the university and Galinda courts him, though he’s fascinated by Elphaba. Galinda convinces another student to take Nessarose to a party so she can go with Fiyero. In turn Elphaba convinces Madame Morrible to let Galinda join the sorcery seminars. Elphaba turns up at the party, wearing the pointed hat Galinda gave her (a gift from a relative). When people laugh Galinda, remorseful, dances with her, bringing new acceptance for Elphaba.

As they study it becomes clear that there is prejudice against talking animals. Dr Dillamore, a talking goat who teaches history (and can’t say Galinda) is banned from teaching. The new teacher brings in an invention, a cage with a lion cub in, saying the cub will never learn to speak. Elphaba is furious, loses control and puts everyone but her and Fiyero to sleep, the two releasing the cub. Elphaba admits she loves Fiyero, but despite his admiration for her, he prefers Galinda.

Elphaba is invited to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard Of Oz; on an impulse she invites Galinda, now “Glinda” in solidarity with Dr Dillmore. In the city Madame Morrible and the Wizard test Elphaba with the Grimmerie, a magic book that only those with true magic can open. She succeeds and casts a levitation spell she’s been trying to make work, and it gives the monkey guards wings. When the Wizard and Madame Morrible decide to use the winged monkeys as spies she realises they’re behind all the oppression, using the talking animals as (sigh) scapegoats. Elphaba and Glinda escape onto a tower, and Elphaba leaves on a broom while Glinda stays behind, the two explaining their feelings in song, because this is a musical.

A musical film, based on a stage musical, based on the book Wicked, which is a revisionist telling of The Wizard Of Oz; book, 1939 film, and popular memories of each. (Ignoring most of the later Oz books). Why are the slippers silver? The ruby slippers were invented for the film, they’re silver in the original book, and that prevents some copyright shenanigans. So why is the Emerald City actually Emerald?

Enough of this, no one wants my notes on the differences between various Oz related properties. I read the book of Wicked 20 years ago, missed the musical entirely. If I have any particular comment, it’s that Glinda appears particularly opaque, even when singing her motives and feelings seem concealed. Which makes some sense as it’s her own story to herself. Yes, she says, I was a bit selfish and oblivious, but then again I was young.

Some of the song and dance sequences are very good.

Watch This: Musical re-examination of a classic villain, asking what it means to be the unexpected chosen one
Don’t Watch This: Lot of singing, dancing and a half-hearted look at propaganda

4. The Land That Time Forgot (1974)

A bottle washes to shore in England, within is a manuscript which is the narration of the rest of the film by it’s author Bowen Tyler. Tyler was a passenger on a British merchant vessel in the South Atlantic; unfortunately it’s World War One and a German U-Boat torpedoes the ship. Tyler, another passenger Lisa Clayton, and the surviving sailors decide their only chance is to seize control of the U-Boat when it surfaces. Rather surprisingly they manages to do so, though the radio is destroyed.

They then head across the South Atlantic but due to various efforts of each crew to sabotage as control of the U-Boat changes, they get lost and are short of fuel. (At one point Captain Von Schoenvorts threatens to have Tyler tried as a pirate, rather harsh when it was the U-Boat that started the fight). Something having effected the compass they discover the undiscovered Antarctic land of Caprona, and entering through an ice cave discover a tropical land filled with dinosaurs, giant crocodiles, ape-men etc.

Questioning a caveman they learn that there is crude oil which they are able to refine for the engines. This requires them to travel about meeting various dangers. Doing so allows Tyler to figure out how things work here; the further North, the “more evolved” the people and creatures are, so if they move too far south they may devolve into ape-men.

Just as they have enough fuel volcanic eruptions occur, the water starts boiling and one of the German officers shoots his captain to re-capture the U-Boat. Because the water is too hot the U-Boat can’t sail, sinks, everyone onboard killed leaving Tyler and Clayton the only survivors to throw their story into the sea in a bottle.

Based on Edgar Rice Burroughs 3^rd or 4^th most popular series of novels*, it was a fairly dubious premise at the time. And one that has got more so! There’s a lot of time on the U-Boat, lost in the South Atlantic, the two crews trying to take over the ship while also trying to survive. Which is fine, but I was expecting dinosaurs and ape-men! Why are we having a tense war film of enemies forced together at close quarters? Sadly the dinosaurs and ape-men never reach beyond the adequate.

Watch This: U-Boat crew fight dinosaurs
Don’t Watch This: Spends a lot of time with no dinosaurs, and then the dinosaurs are unimpressive

* Tarzan, John Carter Of Mars, Pellucidar (Hollow Earth) and this from the Caspak trilogy

5. Crooks In Cloisters

A gang of criminals hold up a train. With the police on their trail they decide to hide out and their leader Little Walter (Ronald Fraser) takes them to a remote Cornish Island. It’s a monastery so they all pretend to be monks, including Bikini (Barbara Windsor) Walter’s girlfriend and the only female member of the gang. They receive stolen goods, and keep up appearances by tending the farm. Bikini becomes cook despite being bad at it, to keep out of sight.

Sent into town to buy a cookbook, Squirts (Bernard Cribbens) spots the Racing Post and arranges with boatman Phineas (who has been moving the stolen goods in and out) to put bets on the greyhound races. With no local bookie, the barman phones the bets through. Eventually the large bets on Squirts favourite dogs lead the police to them. First though Willy awkwardly falls in love with Phineas’s granddaughter, tourists and the previous monks visit the island (they couldn’t afford to make the changes needed to make it viable as a farm), and they all come to appreciate the calm, rural life. It can’t last though.

This is a rather gentle comedy for a gang of criminals hiding out. Gentle and often toothless. Bikini can’t cook and everyone moans and the sausages are raw. Then she learns from the book and there’s some half-hearted banter about it. Calling each other “Brother Specs” and “Brother Bikini” is almost amusing for a couple of scenes then that’s it. Walt has put up a big picture of Inspector Mungo his arch-enemy and the visiting monks ask if that’s their benefactor. He’s a right… benefactor, is said in an almost venomous way.

Watch This: Light-hearted comedy crime film from the sixties
Don’t Watch This: Unconvincing criminals unconvincingly find themselves attracted to the simple life

6. The Mummy (1999)

In Egypt 1290 BCE Imhotep, high priest, and Anck-su-nanum, the Pharoah’s favourite, are lovers; they kill the Pharoah but are discovered by the Medjai, the guards. Anck-su-nanum commits suicide to let Imhotep escape, trusting he will resurrect her. He flees to Hamunaptra to attempt the ritual, only to be caught by the Medjai, cursed and buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs.

Sometime later Rick O’Connell finds the city of Hamunaptra while serving in the French Foreign Legion; the descendants of the Medjai ensure neither side escape, leaving O’Connel to die in the desert. As it turns out he doesn’t (and neither does his cowardly comrade Beni Gabor).

A couple of years later in 1926 Jonathan Carnahan finds a map and box which he presents to his sister Evelyn, a librarian and Egyptologist. She thinks it can lead her to the lost city of Hamunaptra and the Golden Book of Amun-Ra; her boss Dr Bey thinks it’s a hoax. Jonathan reveals he got the box from the now imprisoned Rick O’Connell; they free him and hire him as a guide.

Travelling by boat they discover there is another expedition being guided by Beni Gabor; also the Medjai leader tells both parties to abandon the quest. They don’t and make it to the city, the two groups eventually finding different parts to investigate.

They uncover Imhotep’s remains and five canopic jars, as well as the locked Book Of The Dead. Evelyn opens the Book Of The Dead and reads from it which resurrects Imhotep as the titular Mummy. After he attacks they all flee back to Cairo except Beni who Imhotep spares because he speaks Hebrew (while offering prayers in various languages) and can translate.

Imhotep follows them to Cairo, hunts down the other expedition members who have the canopic jars, each time becoming more human. At the museum Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan discover Dr Bey is a member of the Medjai, which is why he tried to discourage them. Imhotep unleashes biblical plagues, enthralls local people and kidnaps Evelyn and takes the book; they realise he intends to sacrifice her to raise Anck-su-nanum. The only way to stop him is to find the other book, the Book Of Amun-Ra. They fly back to Hamunaptra and work their way through a variety of setpiece stunts, fights and so forth – one interesting bit being that they can just talk about what they’re planning to do in the presence Imhotep who is ignorant of English.

This is a fun adventure film, that mostly still stands up. If everything’s a bit broad and obvious and, perhaps, Egypt both ancient and 20^th Century aren’t faithfully depicted, the momentum and the charisma of the actors pull it through. Each in turn becomes an agent of chaos at times, in their own way. Rick and Evelyn’s romance feels a little silly, but no more than anything else.

Watch This: Fun, exciting adventure film with a dark tinge of horror to give it a little grit
Don’t Watch This: Slightly dated effects tip it into camp more often than intended
If You Like Mummies: Links to some other mummy films.

7. The Deadly Affair (1967)

British spy Charlie Dobbs (James Mason) interviews Foreign Office civil servant Samuel Fennan in a London park. An anonymous letter denounced him as a communist; he admits that he joined a communist organisation at university in the 30s and later left, having thought it at the time the best way to achieve social justice and then changing his mind. Dobbs assures him that this is not a problem, intending to clear him.

He's disturbed at home that night (waiting up for his unfaithful wife Anne) by a phone call telling him that Fennan has committed suicide. He defends himself when his boss says they’re going to blame him and goes to visit Fennan’s widow, Elsa. Things are odd there; there is a scheduled wake-up call and other off events.

Everyone is happy to just blame Dobbs, but Dobbs knows he’s not to blame so puts his police contact Inspector Mendel on the case. He meets with an old colleague Dieter Frey who he recruited as an agent during the war. He learns that Elsa was the survivor of a Nazi extermination camp, and has contacts with other Germans. He’s attacked by agents, breaking his hand.

As events move on he’s unhappy to learn that Anne’s latest affair is with Frey; he could accept it when it was with people he didn’t know. She’s planning to go to Switzerland with him. Tracking Elsa’s movements they learn she’s a regular at the Aldwych theatre*; they intercept her communications and arrange a meet during a performance of Edward II. There Dobbs learns the truth of the network of agents.

Based on a John Le Carré novel this is a crime story that’s a spy story that’s a very personal drama. 1960s London looks pretty grim to be honest, they pre-exposed the film to create muted colours, which matches the tone of the film. James Mason as Charlie Dobbs (thanks to the film of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold they couldn’t use Le Carré’s George Smiley) is excellent, sharp but also willingly blind to betrayal, righteously furious at being used.

Watch This: Gritty 1960s spy murder film
Don’t Watch This: A lot of people betraying each other for no good reason   

* They’re rehearsing MacBeth when they go there.

8. Kraven The Hunter

International Criminal Nikolai Kravinoff takes his sons Sergei and Dmitri out of school after Sergei’s mother dies. Preparing them for their roles in his organisation he takes them hunting in Ghana. A lion attacks the boys; Sergei protects his brother but is horribly injured. (It’s all a bit weird, not clear if the lion is reacting to some sort of mystical chosen one thing, or just dragging incapacitated prey about). Sergei is found by an anglo-ghanaian girl called Calypso who gives him some of her grandmother’s mystical serum, then calls for help, mysteriously leaving, though she has dropped a tarot card of Strength*.

Sixteen years later Sergei is now Kraven the Hunter a super-powered vigilante assassin, who infiltrates a Russian prison to kill an arms dealer before escaping and making his way to his deceased mother’s far eastern Russian wildlife preserve where he lives in tune with the animals. He then goes to London for Dimitri’s birthday. Dimitri is a singer who can impersonate anyone, Nikolai has kept him out of them family business (perhaps in the hope Sergei will return).

Dimitri is kidnapped by Aleksei Sytsevich, a Russian criminal kingpin who has been transformed by an experiment into having the impenetrable skin and strength of a Rhino, this is very painful and kept from happening by another serum that goes through a port in his skin**. Sytsevich’s thing is offering to be a partner with someone and taking over, and then the partner gets killed, possibly by the person he’s next going to offer a partnership to. He offers Dimitri a partnership. Nikolai refuses to pay the requested ransom as this will make him weak and they will kill Dimitri anyway so Kraven has to find him.

Kraven finds Calypso after all these years; she’s now a hotshot lawyer who goes after international bad guys, and disapproves of Kraven as he’s a murderer. Hence why he never contacted her before, but now he needs her help to find Dimitri. She does, it’s a monastery in Turkey, but it’s a trap Kraven barely escapes. Sytsevich hires The Foreigner, whose thing is killing people using some sort of hypnosis so he does not appear to move.

They’re able to track Kraven and Calypso back to Kraven’s Siberian sanctuary for a final confrontation, Calypso giving him more serum, stampedes, figuring out how to defeat the impenetrable Rhino etc. Except that’s not the final confrontation as Kraven realises that he was drawn in at least as much by father who was threatened by the competing criminal organisation headed by Sytsevich, and then one confrontation more after that one for some reason.

I appreciate this is trying to do crime, mystical connection to nature, magic, a pair of super villains and a bunch of family stuff; it felt rather convoluted and over full. Each scene had one too many things going on, and everyone had to be introduced, re-introduced, do some stuff a couple of times and then finally confront Kraven two or three times. There’s a lot going on and I don’t really think the pay off is worth it. It’s not an epic generational struggle between gangster father and sons who want to do their own thing, or rather it gestures at that. It’s a morally grey superhero who hunts and kills criminals. Russell Crowe doing a Russian accent isn’t a 21^st century Godfather – which is a lurid and sensational crime thriller in itself.

Watch This: Invincible vigilante tears through increasingly dangerous opponents
Don’t Watch This: Invincible vigilante tears through increasingly dangerous opponents

* Strength often has a lion on it. Does that make that deck useless? I’d say yes, but on the other hand Calypso has mystically linked herself to Sergei who is represented by the card, so any reading she makes will be warped around his absence. Another film could have done something with that!

** Is this his only vulnerable spot? We shall have to watch to find out.

9. The Godfather (1972)

In 1945 Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) is getting married. Her father Vito Corleone (Marlone Brando) receives various people at the reception, most of whom who have requests. He is a prominent businessman with contacts throughout the community, including judges, politicians and unions; he's also head of the Corleone crime family addressed as “Don Corleone” or “Godfather” (he is literally the godfather to many people in the film).

Amongst those at the reception are Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Vito’s youngest son, newly returned from the US Marines; he’s described as a war hero. He explains the situation to with his family to his date Kay Adams (Diane Keaton). He points out various people, his step-brother Tom Hagan (Robert Duvall) a lawyer and the family consigliere (counsellor) and Johnny Fontaine, a popular singer whose career has been sponsored by Vito (his godfather) with threats and violence.

Johnny Fontaine’s career is stalling and a movie producer won’t put him in a movie. Hagan goes out to try and persuade him. This fails as the producer has a grudge against Fontaine for seducing and ruining an actress the producer intended for stardom. Then he wakes up to find that the head of one of his beloved horses has been cut off and put in his bed; Fontaine gets the job.

Michael isn’t part of the family business; it had always been Vito's plan that he should be the legitimate one, perhaps go into politics. His brothers Sonny, hot headed, and Fredo, smarmy, run parts of the criminal business. A drug baron known as “The Turk” (he’s actually Italian-American, backed by the Tattaglia crime family, one of the New York “Five Families”) wants to make a deal with Vito, to have him invest in narcotics and use his influence with the police to cover for him. Although Sonny is interested Vito politely turns him down, believing his political connections would not accept it. Vito castigates Sonny for letting the others know what he’s thinking, then sends his enforcer Luca Brasi to find out what the Tattaglia’s have planned. Brasi is killed and Vito gunned down in the street.

Vito survives, then survives another attack in the hospital after Michael discovers corrupt police captain McLuskey has had the police remove Vito’s guards, then left themselves. Sonny, now in charge of the Corleone family, strikes back and a gang war ensues. When The Turk and McLuskey offer to make a deal to end the war Michael volunteers to take revenge. They find out where the meeting is going to be (a restaurant with “the best veal in town”) and hide a gun in the toilet. Michael is searched on the way in, after hearing the proposition he goes to the toilet, retrieves the gun and shoots them both.

With both the Five Families and the police after him Michael escapes to Sicily where local contacts guard him. (The Corleone family business is importing olive oil from Sicily, a front that is also a real business). Fredo meanwhile goes out to Las Vegas where he looks after the family’s casino interests. Sonny stays in New York where they continue to fight a low level gang war.

In Sicily Michael has a quiet time until he meets Apolliana, a local woman. The two fall in love and marry, only for Apolliana to be killed by a car bomb intended for Michael when he is betrayed by one of the bodyguards. Meanwhile back in New York, when Sonny learns that Connie’s husband is abusing her again, he races into the city, only to be killed in an ambush. Tired, heart-broken and not fully recovered from the attack, Vito agrees to peace, allowing narcotics into his territories, and giving up revenge for Sonny. With peace Michael is able to return and, Vito deciding Fredo would not be able to lead, becomes head of the family. He marries Kay and they have two children.

Vito, now consigliere to Michael, identifies Don Barzini of the Barzini family as the one who is behind the efforts to destroy the Corleones. Whoever suggests a meeting with Barzini is a traitor. Michael consolidates power and influence, pushing out their partners in Las Vegas who are too close to Barzini, putting Tom Hagen in charge and relegating his brother Fredo. When Vito dies of a heart attack, it’s Tessio, one of Vito’s oldest associates, who suggests a peace conference. Michael arranges for a wave of assassinations against the dons of the five families, Tessio, Mo Greene the casino partner, and also Connie’s husband, who has confessed to being part of the plot against Sonny. In the end Michael’s wife Kay asks if he had anything to do with the death of Connie’s husband; he denies any knowledge and then goes on to do some godfathering, like at the start of the film.

An epic film that is family drama and crime thriller. Does not shy away from the darkness that is organised crime, though it does make it’s (fictional) families a little more discriminating than in reality. Based on a similarly epic, if not quite so gripping novel of the same name, it introduced the concept of the mafia to the world in an extraordinary yet easily digestible way.

Watch This: A classic of cinema, and especially of crime cinema
Don’t Watch This: Glorifies thugs and murderers

10. Hombre

John Russell, a white man raised as an Apache, learns his adoptive white father has died, also the stagecoach is closing down so they don’t need the horses he’s been selling them. John confronts some men who are bullying other Apaches in the bar, smashing a glass in one’s face. Returning to town, cutting his hair and putting on a suit, he tells Jessie, the manager of the boarding house his father owned, that he’s going to sell it, so she will have to leave. She goes to her lover, the sheriff, who commiserates but won’t marry her, so she decides to leave town.

Dr and Mrs Favor, a rich couple, visit the stagecoach office which is closing up, and offer a lot of money to run one last coach for them. Various characters, Jessie, Billy Lee the messenger and his wife Doris and John all get on the stage, and are joined by Grimes who bullies a former soldier into giving him his ticket.

Discussions on the coach reveal that John is sympathetic to the Native Americans which Mrs Favor puts down to naïve ignorance as Dr Favor used to run an Indian Agency. Discovering that he is, in fact, an Apache, they ask that he ride outside on the coach.

The stage coach driver decides to take them by a different route, to the annoyance of Grimes. The next day they are held up by a gang, including some of the bullies from the bar and the sheriff. Grimes is revealed to be the inside man. Dr Favor has $12,000 which he embezzled from the agency, leaving the Apaches to starve. They leave, taking Mrs Favor as a hostage but John gets free and shoots two of them, recovering the money. They then spend the rest of the film trying to survive, John generally indifferent to everyone else. The gang want the money. Dr Favor wants the money, also maybe his wife. It’s cat and mouse and they’re running out of water.

A spare, unforgiving western. Paul Newman as John Russell is taciturn, though by the standards of some of the revisionist Westerns that followed he has plenty of words to give precision to his acting. It spends a lot of time getting to know the characters, and then trapping them out in the wilderness to live or die for a bag full of money. Or perhaps one of dirty laundry.

Watch This: Western very much interested in the grit and horror of making a fortune out West
Don’t Watch This: A bunch of unpleasant people hang about in the mountains for a while