Out of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh)

Right up until the third act, Out of Sight has a series of edifying flashbacks, which reveal important facts in the ground situation; almost enough to set the start of the present action back a few years. The film starts in flashback, which isn’t immediately clear, and then the series of consecutive flashbacks builds to inform the opening flashback. The film opens with George Clooney getting arrested for a bank robbery, the film proper starts two years later when Clooney’s planning a prison escape.

Or does it, because it’ll soon turn out there’s something from two years before the start of movie with the arrest and it’s really important.

We—the audience—get to know Clooney more through the flashbacks than the present action. In the present action, outside having a strained friendship with ex-wife Catherine Keener (in a fun credited cameo, the film’s got a bunch of both), we don’t learn anything about Clooney except he really, really likes Jennifer Lopez. Lopez is the U.S. Marshal who happens across Clooney’s prison break and he takes her hostage, only for her to outsmart one of his partners, played by Steve Zahn, and escape.

So the movie is Clooney and his partner, Ving Rhames, trying to pull off one last job while Lopez is after Clooney because of professional pride and a bewildered enthusiasm, while Clooney is trying to flirt with Lopez. At no point does Out of Sight not embrace the fantastical nature of their attraction; Clooney’s a weary career criminal, Lopez is a gun enthusiast who likes beating the shit of out bad guys when they deserve it, and she can’t figure out if Clooney deserves it. Those deliberations lead to some inevitabilities, some more tragic than others. All of them wonderful. Clooney and Lopez’s chemistry, under Soderbergh’s lens, Anne V. Coates’s cuts, Elliot Davis’s photography, David Holmes’s music, Scott Frank’s script… is singular. Lopez is great in Out of Sight, while Clooney’s just very, very good. But Lopez is just as singular as their chemistry. And it’s her movie… right up until the third act turns out to be a poorly engineered addition on the actual plot.

If Out of Sight is about Lopez’s Three Days of the Condor with Clooney, it’s pretty great. There’s not enough of a finale scene between the two of them; it’s like Soderbergh and Frank split it up, but what the film’s already established is Lopez and Clooney need to spend more time together, not have more scenes together with a lot less time. It’s a strange bummer because it’s this very obvious rising action and they screw it up. But it’s pretty great. And it’s Lopez’s movie. Obviously.

But if it’s about Clooney’s last big score, which conveniently involves the exact same cast of characters as appear in the flashback so there can be all sorts of neat reveals as the runtime progresses… Out of Sight is a fail. It’s a high fail. But it’s a fail. There’s just not enough of a story to it. Soderbergh’s direction is always great, but Frank’s writing isn’t as invested in the homage to seventies crime thrillers thing Soderbergh is doing. It’s underprepared. Beautifully shot, with some great dialogue, but this aspect of the film feels artificially constrained. Because the actual protagonist in the crime arc ends up being Zahn’s in-over-his-head stoner. Zahn’s fine. He’s not great. He needs to be great for it to work. So even if it weren’t a problem character in the narrative, it’d also be a problem performance. But a fine one. There aren’t any bad performances in Out of Sight, just great ones, good ones, middling ones, and concerning ones (i.e. was Isiah Washington’s terrifying sociopath just his real personality). Soderbergh gets really good performances out of the cameos too (with the exception of Michael Keaton, pointlessly crossing over from another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown). There aren’t a lot of comic moments in the film and Soderbergh clamps down hard on all of them. Keaton’s scene has Dennis Farina elaborately messing with his head in pseudo-polite conversation. Farina’s sadly the least of the good performances. There’s also no meat to the part.

Luis Guzmán gets a good small part in the first act. He’s good. Rhames is good, Don Cheadle’s real good, Albert Brooks is good. Really nice performances from Viola Davis and Nancy Allen, like Soderbergh goes out of his way to showcase their acting. It’s very cool.

Though no one’s real super cool. Out of Sight’s careful with its potential crime glorification. Clooney’s a tragic figure, he just also happens to be George Clooney. Lopez finds herself in his attempt at a fantasy world, one where he lets himself get distracted by their chemistry, then reality—Cheadle and Washington are vicious killers—crashes in. Only not because Lopez isn’t part of the movie in the third act.

It’s also never close. Like. Sight runs a nimble two hours and there’s never a moment you think it’s actually going to work out as well as it should. The third act is a disaster if anyone but Soderbergh and crew are pulling it off. They leverage Lopez and Clooney’s chemistry to get across the finish line; it’s craven.

It’s also real good. It’s a usually faultlessly executed motion picture and Lopez is phenomenal.

The Midnight Sky (2020, George Clooney)

The Midnight Sky goes wrong for a number of reasons. It’s too thin, even with phenomenal special effects—half the film is an Arctic adventure tale, half the film is a hard sci-fi but done as a 2001 homage. They’re destined to collide, but the Arctic adventure ceases to be an Arctic adventure by that time and instead has become… well. It’s kind of hard to describe.

A poorly executed character study maybe?

Doesn’t matter. The Arctic adventure stuff and its importance in the narrative is a complete waste of time. The space stuff is where it’s at in Sky, which is a problem since it’s a movie where George Clooney directs George Clooney in an Arctic adventure poorly juxtaposed opposite a space mission’s return to Earth.

The year is 2049. We make big advances in science real fast apparently, but there’s another global pandemic or something about to it, we just know it. So we’re going to colonize a previously undiscovered moon of Jupiter. Clooney has spent his whole life working towards that goal—starting when he’s in flashback and the character is played by Ethan Peck. Oddly, we know what George Clooney looked like thirty years ago and he did not look like Peck. Also Peck’s performance is terrible. Like. Real bad. Just real bad.

The whole flashback thing is a disaster. It doesn’t have to be a disaster. If Clooney were interested in pulling it off—Clooney the director here—it could be fine. Because Sky shows it can be fine, when it’s in space and Clooney gets to do the mechanics of speculative space travel stuff. Then he’s interested.

But when he’s literally the star of the movie… not so much.

Clooney’s the last man on Earth until he finds out he’s not. There’s a forgotten little girl (played by Caoilinn Springall), who’s forecast in the first scene with a jackhammer. There’s no nuance, no subtly. Midnight Sky hangs at least three Chekov rifles on the wall in the first act, with Clooney holding the shot on them about five times too long. Stephen Mirrione’s editing is one of the film’s strongest technicals and the film’s got lots of strong technicals, but the literal physical plot giveaways? Mirrione can’t cut those lingering shots well because they’re bad shots.

So Clooney’s got to warn the last spaceship to turn away from Earth or else they’ll die and now he’s got to bring this kid across the Arctic with him. And there are dangers and so on. There are some great action thriller sequences with it, but since they add up to bupkis with Springall (who suffers the thin writing worst in the cast, which is impressive because there’s so much thin writing), they’re kind of a waste. They’re Clooney padding it out with technical success while it turns out, giving himself this great character study part, he’s got zero interest in acting the role. It’s an incredibly loose performance; Clooney puts no effort into directing Clooney.

And, outside Springall, pretty much no one else either. He just sort of lets them try to figure it out on their own, though Tiffany Boone and Demián Bichir do get some direction and to good effect. They’re on the spaceship with Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, and Kyle Chandler. Oyelowo is the best—and gives the film’s best performance; he’s the captain. Jones is the engineer maybe. She’s pregnant. There’s a bit of pointless tension over introducing the father’s identity, but it’s in the space section so it’s permissible.

Chandler’s the pilot. Chandler gets the least direction. At times you wonder if he literally rejected it. He’s fine though. Jones is fine too. Though with less affability than Chandler.

We’re going to find out—if we can’t guess—Jones is going to be incredibly important only she’s never incredibly important. Quite the opposite. She’s the least interesting character on the spaceship because otherwise the third act twist and turn won’t work.

She also gets all the alien planet scenes to herself and they’re all terrible CGI composites. Like, Martin Ruhe should be reprimanded terrible. Otherwise his photography’s fine. It’s not great. It’s fine.

But the production values are strong, even if Jim Bissell’s production design is 2001 plus Alien plus I think “Doctor Who” plus The Thing plus… you get the idea. There’s not a single original visual in the movie, which is understandable, there have been so many sci-if movies you can’t reinvent the wheel or spinning centrifuge again.

The lighting in the spaceship itself is always good.

The real star ends up being Alexandre Desplat’s music, which seems to be from that better movie Oyelowo is acting in. Seriously, by the third act, it’s incredible Desplat was able to come up with such good music to accompany such insipid narrative.

So.

The Midnight Sky is a technically excellent sci-fi outing—also, the 2049 thing, seriously, if they’d bumped it another thirty to fifty years it’d end up making the movie at least ten percent less silly—but otherwise it’s a well-acted stinker. Though, cut all the Clooney stuff and add some more space stuff and the story’d probably be good.

But with the Clooney stuff? It is not good. It’s not even disappointing, because when Sky crashes, it does so proudly under its own hubris. It has it coming, which is a disservice to the better performances and the quality production.

Clooney maybe should’ve found a better lead for it; someone whose acting he was interested in watching would’ve been a good start.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Frank Oz)

I begin talking about Little Shop of Horrors with a confession—I didn’t like it as a kid. I think I saw it a couple times on video, but a full decade before I was willing to give musicals a chance. Now, of course, I can appreciate the absolute glory of the film’s musical numbers, particularly in the first half. Director Oz, choreographer Pat Garrett, production designer Roy Walker, cinematographer Robert Paynter, editor John Jympson, the entire cast, they do a phenomenal job. The film opens—after a text crawl—with its Greek chorus, Tichina Arnold, Tisha Campbell, and Michelle Weeks and it’s excellent, but then the film brings it up another dozen notches with an elaborate, full-set (Pinewood Studios set so a gargantuan one) number, which also brings in protagonists Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene—it’s truly wonderful stuff.

Also when I was a kid I didn’t like movies shot on sets. They had to be shot on location, something I’d forgotten about but was—as I recall—solely so my best friend and I could dismiss things out of hand.

I was obnoxious.

Anyway. The movie’s mostly great. Around the halfway mark, it becomes a special effects spectacular, with a giant otherworldly Venus flytrap (voiced by Levi Stubbs) singing duets in real-time with Moranis. There are bigger effects sequences as the plant grows and grows, thanks to Moranis’s willingness to provide it with human blood then flesh, but nothing’s more impressive than the puppeteers keeping it all in time. It’s phenomenal work. And exactly the kind of thing I should’ve appreciated as a kid (being a Muppet fan). Maybe it was the pan and scan.

While the story is about this carnivorous plant promises Moranis fame and fortune—instead of early sixties skid row squalor, the film’s got a separate arc running simultaneously: revealing Greene can belt out a song like nobody’s business. Throughout the film, outside the musical numbers (but also in most of them), Greene does a blonde bimbo voice—she’s never a blonde bimbo caricature, mind you, she’s just got the voice and the character’s behind it. She sings a full solo in the bimbo voice, but when it comes time for her big romance number with Moranis, Little Shop reveals her full range and it propels the film. Just when the film’s going to need it the most, because the third act is mess.

It’s not a mess, just messy. There aren’t great cameos—the first two acts have John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray (with Steve Martin basically doing a giant extended cameo as Greene’s sadist boyfriend, the local dentist)—instead we get Jim Belushi. I mean… Jim Belushi? He’s fine, but… Jim Belushi? Candy’s got a funny scene as a radio show host, Murray’s a pain seeker who enrages Martin with his desire for torment, and then Jim Belushi. Little Shop manages to avoid caricature in every one of its principals—including the Greek chorus—for the last stunt cameo to be a disposable one from Belushi. It’s a very weird miss, especially since it comes after an extended break from stunt cameos so it’s not like they needed another one. They could’ve gone out with Murray and Martin’s simultaneously revolting and exhilarating scene, but instead Belushi in a throwaway.

So, messy.

Obviously, in the intervening years since release, we—the royal we, lots of people knew at the time because it’s a stage adaptation—know the film’s got an entirely different ending than originally intended and shot and there are some rough tone shifts in the third act. It doesn’t help the “Moranis gets famous” arc is too rushed (and a much better place for a stunt cameo), especially since Greene doesn’t participate in it even after they become de facto business partners.

The resolve is abrupt but decent, with Oz finding a good enough tone, seemingly aware he’s just got to get to the end credits and they can run a song medly and it’ll all be fine.

Great performances from Greene, Moranis, and Martin. Martin’s an Elvis bad boy who’s the perfect combination of vile and jackass. Moranis is the shy orphan who doesn’t realize he’s come into his own; he does well on the singing, but he’s never the actual star of the sequence, it’s Stubbs or Greene. Greene’s breathtaking. Her character arc’s not great but it’s good enough under the circumstances and, wow, can she belt. There’s one number where she’s holding this note and ostensibly Moranis is keeping up with her but it’s like… what noise was he actually making because how could he keep up.

Stubbs is awesome as the plant.

And it’s impossible imagine anyone but Arnold, Weeks, and Campbell as the Chorus, who also suffer in the third act (but at least they get to go out on a great number).

Little Shop’s a delight and a big success. Even with the messy third act, changed ending, whatever, it’s an achievement for Oz and his crew, Greene, Moranis, Martin, and company.

Hard eye roll at my nine year-old take on this one.

Best in Show (2000, Christopher Guest)

Best in Show is a masterpiece of editing. Guest’s direction is spectacular as well—the way he creates space for the performances—but it’s all about how Guest and editor Robert Leighton construct the narrative. Even in the second half, when Best in Show becomes a singular tour de force of buffoonery from Fred Willard, it’s all about the editing.

The film opens with an introduction to its cast–Show is a mockumentary about a fictional dog show, specifically the contestants (well, their humans) in the “Best in Show” category. For the first act, Show is going to go through a variety of comedic tones, ranging from the very acerbic (super-yuppies Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock) to the nearly absurdist (Floridians Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, with the Florida doing a lot of the lifting). Posey and Hitchcock are trying to get their Weimaraner (Sporting Group) mentally prepared for the big show (the dog’s been in a rut since walking in on them in the bedroom apparently), while O’Hara and Levy’s biggest problem is O’Hara running into one of her numerous ex-boyfriends, which causes Levy intense jealousy. Their dog, a Norwich (Terrier Group), probably has the least to do in the film.

Then there’s John Michael Higgins and Michael McKean, who have a Shih Tzu (Toy Group). They don’t have much melodrama in their story—I misremembered them at one point running into McKean’s ex-wife (who he left for Higgins), but no—and it’s mostly just Higgins being hilarious and McKean providing support for him. The dog’s adorable. They will be the most aware of the competition aspect of the prizes, with the previous winner their clear nemesis. The previous winner is a Standard Poodle (Non-Sporting Group), owned by trophy wife Jennifer Coolidge. Coolidge doesn’t do the training, instead having handler Jane Lynch do it. Since Coolidge and Lynch won the last two years, the film follows them the most of any of the groups once it’s dog show time.

Finally, there’s director Guest, who’s got the Bloodhound (Hound Group).

The first half of the film is the lead-up to the dog show, tracking the eventual contestants as they prepare and travel to the show. It’s a showcase for each of the actors, with Guest careful not to showoff his own performance too much. Technically, Guest playing a Southerner who loves his dog is probably the best technical performance. It’s seamless and sincere; Show’s very careful in how it joshes dog ownership. With Guest in particular, then probably Higgins and McKean, it does convey the emotional regard the owners have for the animals—no one’s going to be worse than Posey and Hitchcock (the scenes with Hitchcock berating the dog are simultaneously hilarious and horrifying to the point you hope the dog was deaf). Show’s very good at how it jokes about its characters and their eccentricities.

Other first half interviewees include Bob Balaban as the dog show president, Don Lake as the show floor supervisor, and Ed Begley Jr. as the hotel manager. Begley gets some of the best material in the film—as the only person outside the dog show world who isn’t an ex perving on O’Hara in front of Levy, he’s got the angle closest to—presumably—the viewer (not sure how Show plays to dog show contestants, though outside the the interviewees, everyone seems “normal”). But Begley gets to intersect with various characters; otherwise it’s chance encounters.

Once they get to the show proper, the film brings in Willard as one of the announcers—Jim Piddock is his hilariously suffering straight man—and Best in Show becomes the “Fred Willard Show,” in the best possible way. Willard’s profoundly, intentionally unaware host knows less about the dog show than anyone who’s watched the first half of the film; all the procedure and absurdity focuses on Willard and reflects out, with Willard’s ignorance giving the viewer a chance to know more about dog shows than the announcer. It’s a relatively easy idea but Willard’s so spectacular it becomes singular.

All of the performances are good, with O’Hara and Levy the standout couple—at one point they both have to do physical comedy and are superb—with Guest, Higgins, and Lynch all fantastic solo performances. Coolidge and Hitchcock are on the next tier, just based on material (though Coolidge’s lack of material is part of her joke), then I guess Posey and McKean. They’re both good, they just don’t have the best parts in their couples.

Guest’s direction—and the importance of the editing—comes through most in the first half, before the film can rely on Willard to move mountains; again, Best in Show is a comedy masterpiece, with Guest leveraging the cast’s abilities (not to mention his own) and he and Leighton’s phenomenal editing of the material. Roberto Schaefer’s photography is also excellent, although not as consequential to the film’s big successes. Some of the lighting is so good you wish the interview segment could go on longer just to showcase it.

While it may very well be possible for a comedy mockumentary to be better than Best in Show… it seems very unlikely. The film’s a (quietly) remarkable achievement.

Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood)

Mystic River is at all times a very American tragedy. Eastwood approaches it as such, both as director and composer (it’s Aaron Copland levels of romanticized, you eventually just have to go with it because Eastwood’s committed). But it’s also really just MacBeth in Bah-ston. A very, very cynical one. There’s not a single moment in Mystic River where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves, well, almost any single moment. At least, there’s never a single moment where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves or others. There; covered.

So it’s this “Bah-ston can be legitimate Americana too” crime tragedy mixed with an overwhelming sense of personal failure, starting from the first scene, which is a flashback to three tween boys playing street hockey in Boston of (late seventies) yore. Because they’ve been raised to unquestionably not challenge adult authority—or male bonding rituals—one of them ends up abducted and assaulted for four days before escaping. The other two friends go to see him when he gets home, but since he’s “damaged goods,” they fall off.

They grow up and become state police detective Kevin Bacon (state police means he’s not a Boston cop because they’re dumb), ex-con gone straight Sean Penn, and then there’s Tim Robbins, playing the abducted kid grown up. The only one of three who doesn’t have a real story is Bacon, who’s got some nonsense about his wife leaving him for a mystery reason and then calling him on the phone and not talking. I’ll spoil the stunt cast on the wife because it’s the film’s only completely obvious problem—Tori Davis isn’t good. Like. She can’t even convincingly hold a phone to her ear in close-up. It’s a thin subplot, so thin Bacon and partner Laurence Fishburne’s buddy cop antics are better and they’re incredibly muted for realism’s sake. Eastwood always positions Fishburne like he can walk off with the movie unless he’s boxed in (because Fishburne’s one of the natural protagonists; the film has many, just none of the three leads), only Bacon can’t hold up his end because his character’s thin. He doesn’t get to chomp away at his part like Penn or Robbins, who consume the film like it’s a whole chicken and they’re competing to see who can eat the most bones.

The three reunite over tragedy—someone murders Penn’s daughter, a just okay Emmy Rossum (Eastwood and Phyllis Huffman do a great job casting the film except for the kids—and the Wahlberg brother who can’t stop grinning like a jackass he’s in a real movie without his brother; the film at least needs to explain Robert Wahlberg’s goon is the comic psychopath one). The audience already knows Robbins saw her the night she died and then he came home really late covered in blood and told Marcia Gay Harden he beat up a mugger.

It hasn’t been an easy marriage for Harden and Robbins—though he’s a seemingly an outstanding dad to tween age son Cayden Boyd, something Harden doesn’t ever seem to acknowledge. If it turned out Boyd were a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf kid, it would actually make more sense. With no changes to the film whatsoever. But he can’t hold a job and he’s just, you know, “damaged goods.” The first act of the film, covering the ground situation after the initial tragedy… it’s kind of an indictment of the culture it’s presenting. Of the Americana. Eastwood and production designer Henry Bumstead don’t Catholic it up–there’s not even a priest in it—there’s religiosity and the importance of it in the character’s lives, but the only imagery is in Penn’s tattoos. It’s got to be broader than a specific denomination. More universal. Also, from the one church scene, you can tell Eastwood could give a shit. He lets kids be cute or whatever, but otherwise, he’s out of church faster than Homer Simpson.

Because Mystic River is all about the pace. It’s got to keep moving to stay ahead of the story rolling downhill faster and faster. Because another thing Eastwood and screenwriter Brian Helgeland do to keep the melodrama down is artificially constrain the amount of information presented to the audience. Characters have obtuse conversations so as not to spoil a surprise later. At one or two points, people read lists like they can’t possibly have skipped ahead to see the relevant information. And somehow, thanks to Eastwood’s pacing and the actors, they can get away with it. Right until the third act, River stays ahead of that story boulder.

It comes to a weird resolve, where they do a sequence juxtapose and Eastwood can only figure out one of them—though the other has the wanting youth performances—and then it turns out he figured out the wrong one; it wasn’t even the important one. Not really.

Then comes the initially cruel but then just the driest, most hopeless cynicism in the world and all of a sudden it works again. It’s an amazing last few minutes save from the film, leveraging the excellent pace, plus some great acting and intriguing reveals. Part of the artificial information constraint is to allow for secret after secret. Everyone in Mystic River lies. Almost everyone in Mystic River is easily manipulated. Eastwood and Helgeland find the mundane tragedies of people who seemingly have spectacular ones. Without every losing their pace.

There are stumbles, but the pace is always great.

Best acting is Tim Robbins, then Sean Penn. It’s the script’s fault; Robbins just gets better material. They cast for obvious because most of the actors are playing caricatures; it might’ve been better if they’d mixed it up, who knows. Then it’s Marcia Gay Harden and Laurence Fishburne, with Kevin Bacon coming in sixth. He’s excellent—but being excellent isn’t enough and Fishburne’s actually got less than even Bacon and does more. Laura Linney’s also great but she’s not on the list because she never get to run a scene. Ditto uncredited guest stars Eli Wallach, who’s awesome, and Kevin Conway, who’s real good but not awesome. Wallach is one of the two times Mystic River lets itself have any fun (the John Carpenter’s Vampires nod doesn’t count because it’s not fun it’s heartbreaking); the other time is this hilarious joke Penn thug buddy #1 (Kevin Chapman) tells. Chapman and thug buddy #2 Adam Nelson are both fine. Grinner Wahlberg makes three. He’s not fine.

Mixing up the leads, not revealing too much to the audience, not wasting time intentionally misleading the audience, there are a lot of places where Mystic needs some tinkering but it’s still really damn good.

The acting—and Eastwood’s emphasis on the acting—is glorious. Mystic misses its mark, but it’s an often magnificent try.

If I Were You (2012, Joan Carr-Wiggin)

At the halfway point in If I Were You, it seems like the film’s biggest problem is going to be Joseph Kell being charmless. Close second is Valerie Mahaffey’s small part being a waste of Mahaffey. Director Carr-Wiggin’s script is a tad plodding in the plotting, but it’s because she’s thorough and it does just mean more great acting from lead Marcia Gay Harden. Then, somewhere in the second hour… they change film or video “stock” and cinematographer Bruce Worrall cannot shoot it. Especially not in the finale. It’s stunningly bad lighting, especially given the first half or whatever looks really good. Carr-Wiggin’s composition is fairly standard, but they’re fine shots.

And then… we get to the third act and the resolve. There are problems with the movie jumping ahead three weeks, hiding important things from the viewer, and coping out getting through all the drama. But they end up not mattering because also find out second lead Leonor Watling is great. Can give a great performance and act the hell out of anything and Carr-Wiggin doesn’t have her do it. Carr-Wiggin lets Watling stay solvent opposite Harden—who knocks over everyone else in the cast, especially Kell and Gary Piquer, until Aidan Quinn shows up to show off how good it can be when Harden’s got someone with the same ability class in a scene. But it could’ve been Watling for the whole movie.

Only they didn’t do it. There wasn’t even a reason for it with the time job and the way they do the resolve.

It’s really disappointing.

Especially since, just before the time jump, If I Were You has never been better or had more potential. Well, sort of it. I’ll get there.

The movie opens with seemingly happily married Harden discovering Kell is cheating on her with Watling. When Watling turns out to be in need of a wellness check, Harden ends up being the one to do it and starts hanging out with her to find out about the affair. For this portion of their relationship—and most of the first act of the film—Harden’s blotto. She plays a great drunk. Like, masterclass in drunk acting. When she stumbles around you can feel it because you’ve felt it. Also Harden doesn’t tell Watling she’s the wife. But she does tell Watling she’s got a cheating husband.

Eventually Harden and Watling come up with this plan where Harden’s going to tell Watling what to do, Watling is going to tell Harden what to do. It’s a middling but effective scene. It’s got a lot to do and it takes a while but it gets it done but now, having finished the film, I know it could’ve been so much better because Watling could’ve been amazing in it.

The movie runs almost two hours—and is missing at least another ten minutes of story—and there’s a very clear first and second act. Second act is about Harden’s mom being close to death, Harden and Watling teaming up to star in a play together, coworker Piquer (who’s good and funny just not able to stay afloat opposite Harden) pursuing her post-affair discovery, and then Quinn as another son of a patient at the mom’s care facility.

There are only a couple scenes with Quinn and Harden but they’re so good together. He’s so good. It might be an hour before he shows up (“and” credit, after all) but when he and Harden have their meet cute in bad circumstances? It’s killer. You could watch a whole movie of them smiling at each other. Longer than even If I Were You should run. Just excellent acting. Two performances of it instead of just one and, I don’t know, forty percent and lower ability-wise.

Except, of course, Watling could’ve done more. Carr-Wiggin just didn’t bother with it. And then completely copped out with the conclusion. Skipped all the important character development. Movie goes from four days being thoroughly inspect to three weeks not being important at all.

The kicker is the play-in-the-movie implies this exceptional potential project, far more promising than the film itself. And even with that highlight—albeit a poorly lighted one—Carr-Wiggin’s still cops out. It’s very weird to see such an… elaborately plotted film very clearly not have an ending. It’s disappointing. But Harden and Quinn give exceptional performances, admittedly in not-heavy-lifting parts (partially because not even the movie asks you to take Kell seriously opposite Harden), and Watling can probably be great in stuff and got very awkwardly wasted.

Oh, and strangely great support from Bethany Jillard. Only strange because she’s just in the play and doesn’t even have a real character name, but she’s always doing something awesome. Much of If I Were You is waiting to see excellent acting, usually from Harden, then Quinn, and then—if you’re playing attention—Jillard. And, you know, Watling when she gets to do it.

Millie (1931, John Francis Dillon)

Even with some first and third act problems and a peculiar present action–Millie’s a solid melodrama. It works up actual suspense, actual danger, and finds true villainy amid the pat shittiness of men. In addition to passing Bechdel—briefly but definitely—the film ends up fully confronting all the things it seems like it’d be safer to avoid, especially since it shifts the protagonist role from the title character—played by Helen Twelvetrees—to the aforementioned villain. It’s a successful move, even if it does mean Twelvetrees loses the third act.

To be fair, of course, the better movie for Twelvetrees is potential Millie 2, as she spends this film floundering for seventeen or eighteen years (the aforementioned peculiar present action).

The film starts with Twelvetrees a rambunctious, but marriage age, teen, who lets businessman James Hall talk her into marrying him so she can move to New York. Of course, before she can go to New York, they need to stop off at a motel so Hall can check the tires (at least they elope first). It’s a disquieting scene, with Twelvetrees playing it a little too histrionic but at least they’re trying, as the film makes all sorts of implications about Hall’s expectations of her and her questionable willingness.

Then the film skips ahead three years to Twelvetrees a miserable wealthy housewife who isn’t even allowed to bathe her own kid. Hall is always going out on business and never wants to paw her anymore; at least mother-in-law Charlotte Walker is nice to her (better than her own mom, who threw her to wolf Hall without a thought), but Twelvetrees needs friends. So when childhood pal Joan Blondell calls up looking for a loan from a rich friend, Twelvetrees is more than happy to hang out.

Blondell and her roommate, Lilyan Tashman, are professional lady friends to rich, sometimes married men who travel the country looking for the best time. We don’t get a lot of specifics, but it’ll turn out acerbic Tashman is the soulful one whereas Blondell is always the ditz. They’re both really good, but Tashman’s fantastic when she gets to play it earnest.

Unfortunately, they take Twelvetrees to a place she’s never frequented—a lunchtime cabaret for businessmen and their girlfriends—and she’s in for a rude awakening.

The next time jump is two to four years (I think it starts at two, then skips ahead another two to hit four total; sometimes there are title cards, sometimes not) and Twelvetrees is now on her own, trying to make her own way. She’s still good friends with Tashman and Blondell, but isn’t interested in finding men to pay for her upkeep. Instead she works at a hotel cigarette stand, charming various men, most importantly businessman John Halliday and newspaper reporter Robert Ames, but never getting serious (or horizontal) with them.

This middle section of the film, which has Twelvetrees’s anti-romance resolve breaking and coming to another rude awakening, has her best acting in the film. She’s no longer reduced to either giddiness or despair and there’s a lot of character development before she gives in to temptation.

The last act has another jump ahead—this time seven or eight years (I should remember, there’s a title card)—and at that point the film shifts from Twelvetrees being the protagonist to her being the subject. Most of the supporting cast doesn’t get old age makeup, but Twelvetrees gets very tired late thirties eyeshadow and maybe Rock gets a little. Frank McHugh, as Rock’s fellow reporter and amiable sidekick, however, gets none. And Halliday finally seems to be playing his age (late forties).

Though the film’s very timey-wimey with the present action. If it starts in 1931 and ends in the late forties, obviously there’s no World War II because they didn’t know but there’s also no change in the world in those seventeen years. If it starts in 1914 and ends in 1931 or whatever… I mean, they missed the Great War. Also the technology appears identical.

The third act has all the suspense and the most dramatic melodrama—not really soapy though—and while the resolution sets up a far better potential story for the cast, it’s still a reasonable success. Just a bummer they weren’t able to center Twelvetrees through it—though then you couldn’t do the third act in fifteen or twenty minutes; it would’ve been nice for her to get to keep her movie in the finish.

Acting-wise, Twelvetrees, Halliday, and Tashman are the best. Ames is a little flat, though some of it’s the script (some of it’s just everyone else having more personality). Hall’s probably the only complete whiff. Solid support from Anita Louise as well.

Millie’s a lot better than it should be, with the filmmakers actually sticking by a scandalous but also not at all story until they get it told. And when Twelvetrees gets to be the star (and have some agency), she’s excellent.

The Woman Between (1931, Victor Schertzinger)

The Woman Between ought to be the most scandalous, salacious Pre-Code soap possible given the tawdry subject matter—trophy-ish wife Lili Damita (it’s complicated, she’s got her own business and she’s French) cheats on her husband on her latest voyage back from Europe and it turns out she’s shacked up with his son, Lester Vail. Now, they don’t know each other because Vail ran away from home when dad O.P. Heggie announced he was getting married. Apparently Vail didn’t even know Damita’s name? It seems like he might’ve heard it since she was a famous dress shop owner in New York but whatever….

The film takes about fifteen minutes—it only runs seventy—to get to that core drama; until then, it spends a bunch of time following Heggie’s daughter, Miriam Seegar, around as she prepares for Vail’s homecoming. Including going to Damita’s dress shop. But it actually opens with Seegar’s friend, Anita Louise, in an inventive opening title sequence.

Sadly that opening title sequence is the last time the film is inventive.

And then once it gets to the dress shop it seems like at the very least there will be amazing Art Deco set design. But then the shop is the only place with amazing Art Deco set design and we’re rarely going back to the shop.

When Damita arrives… well, she’s opposite Seegar and Louise and Seegar and Louise have already had enough material it’s clear they’re going to be godawful—it can’t be all their fault, given Schertzinger’s direction—but Damita gets some initial sympathy because Seegar and Louise are so bad. Then Heggie shows up and he’s bad, but then Vail shows up and he’s annoying; Damita runs out of sympathy fast.

Pretty soon, once Damita and Vail have realized what they’ve done, Woman Between gets engaging for it’s pure proto-camp value. Damita’s vamping around, Heggie’s doing this weird comedic thing, Seegar’s hissing… but the film’s got no sense of humor. It’s got joke sequences, always involving the staff—Halliwell Hobbes plays the butler and gets a bunch of it, but there’s some poor Black elevator operator who has to mug for Damita in an initial attempt to make her seem likable (which we never get again, actually)—and it’s always terrible. Because if Schertzinger’s even aware he needs timing, he’d have no idea how to execute it. And William Hamilton wouldn’t be able to cut for it.

Though, I’ll be a little nice—great photography from J. Roy Hunt.

The movie’s terrible and not even worth it for cringe-laughs, but Hunt’s black and white photography is excellent. Even though Schertzinger usually just has him shooting people standing against a wall–Woman Between might be a play adaptation, but it’s not stagy, it’s wall-y—at an angle. Terrible blocking in the film. Just real bad.

The ending makes a bit of a louder flop than expected—the third act, with better direction, might’ve been suspenseful—but the real problem is the performances, specifically Schertzinger’s direction of them.

Plus, you know, the script’s not good either. It’s just a soapy stinker.

Simon of the Desert (1965, Luis Buñuel)

Simon of the Desert opens with the title character, played by Claudio Brook, getting a new pillar after six years on his first(?) one. He’s a priest doing penance (just general penance) and living his life in prayer atop a pillar, eating nothing but lettuce, drinking nothing but water, and a local rich guy appreciates Brook curing him of something so he gets Brook a new pillar.

Apparently the Devil (Silvia Pinal) agrees Brook’s resolve seems to be cracking—while he takes the new pillar, he doesn’t take a big blessing because he doesn’t deserve it and he also doesn’t give his ailing mother, played by Hortensia Santoveña, much comfort when she begs him for it; so Pinal starts showing up to tempt Brook away from his pillar, initially as a salacious school girl.

Desert is set in fourth century Syria, making Pinal’s school girl getup rather anachronistic but director Buñuel treats it just as mundanely as some of the miracles Brook is able to perform and it works. Especially as Pinal’s further disguises are a little less outrageous. At least as far as Brook is going to perceive them.

Most of Simon, which runs forty-five minutes (apparently intended to be in an anthology but there was no anthology), is Brook interacting with someone. Sometimes it’s Pinal, sometimes it’s other priests—never is it Santoveña, who has set up camp in view of the pillar and is always looking for some sign of regard from her son, which gets less and less probable as the runtime progresses. Buñuel has a couple really nice juxtaposed moments between Brook and Santoveña and we get some character development on it for Brook, but only until Pinal really starts trying hard to tempt him down.

Brook’s time alone on the pillar is mostly spent in prayer to a silent God; Pinal’s the only one who seems to be listening. There’s a little bit of voice over to get some of the character development done for Brook, but mostly it works into the dialogue between him and the supporting cast. Really good script from Buñuel and Julio Alejandro, especially when it comes to working in some echoed lines and how they play out in different contexts.

Buñuel’s direction is excellent—Gabriel Figueroa’s black and white photography is a lot flashier, even with the limited setting, just enabling the shot composition. And Carlos Savage’s editing is good too. The timing on the reaction shots between Brook and the people below is outstanding, especially when there’s some great shot at the end of it. There’s one big reveal sequence in particular where Buñuel, Figueroa, and Savage nail it so much the eventual—much larger scale—resolution can’t really compare, technically-speaking (while being a narrative win).

Simon of the Desert is an excellent forty-five minutes.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Buñuel)

Buñuel arranges The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie as a series of vignettes. Occasionally there will be a surreal bridging device—the cast walking in search of a meal on a highway in the country—sometimes it will turn out to be a dream, sometimes it will be another layer (a narrated flashback, a dream-in-a-dream), sometimes it will be more traditionally epical. Mostly in the first act.

The film opens with four people getting to a dinner party, only they’re a day early so they have to go out. But then it turns out fate’s against them having dinner that night. They’ll try again.

The initial dinner guests are Fernando Rey, playing the ambassador from the South American republic Miranda, Paul Frankeur as his friend, Delphine Seyrig as Frankeur’s wife, and Bulle Ogier as Seyrig’s sister. They go out to dinner with Stéphane Audran, who was expecting them for dinner the next night. Because it’ll turn out her husband, Jean-Pierre Cassel, is kind of flakey. Though everyone in Charm is flakey at one time or another, though only a few with any malice behind it.

In the first act we also learn Rey, Frankeur, and Cassel are coke traffickers. Rey brings it in via his ambassador bag—diplomatic immunity—selling to Frankeur and Cassel. The wives don’t appear to know anything about it. There’s a bunch of funny dialogue about ambassadors as smugglers. Charm is often very obviously, intentionally funny. Buñuel will occasionally break out the jokes–especially when introducing Julien Bertheau as the local bishop who moonlights as Audran and Cassel’s new gardener. Bertheau even becomes one of the dinner-seekers—tagging along to various events before his subplot goes its own way.

Because Charm’s also got a some very strong narrative arcs. The second act, after the film introduces the layering device (starting with a great narrated flashback from Christian Baltauss), slowly becomes about centering the narrative focus on Rey. He’s always kind of the lead—he’s sleeping with someone he shouldn’t be and he’s also a cocaine smuggler so he’s on edge; also there are revolutionaries from Miranda in Paris trying to assassinate him—but the process of making him protagonist and directing the narrative, even passively—takes Buñuel a while.

Every one of the dream sequence reveals in the film is a surprise. Even as the events become more absurd—eventually there’s a ghost and it makes perfect sense because ghosts are real in Charm—Buñuel never lessens the intensity of the scene. The drama is always very real. So we gradually come to understand Rey’s self-conscious about being a South American diplomat with these bourgeoisie white French people. There’s never a clarifying scene about whether or not he should be—Buñuel always leaves the judgment of the characters up to the audience; especially when it’s part of the story. Charm’s narrative distance and how Buñuel adjusts it throughout is stunning.

All the acting is excellent. Rey gets the biggest part, obviously, then probably Audran—who gets one more scene without her significant other than any of the other women—then actually Bertheau as the priest. Bertheau’s arc is one of the film’s standout successes. Because Buñuel introduces Bertheau as another angle giving insight into the main cast; he’s an observer too, one who’s socially acceptable to have out to dinner, unlike Milena Vutokic as Audran and Cassel’s maid; Vutokic gets a lot to do (and even gets one of the last big jokes) but she’s all reaction to the cast, she’s got nothing of her own, which ends up being part of the joke.

Ogier and Seyrig both get a couple really good spotlight scenes. Cassel’s always support, but getting more to do than Frankeur, which is kind of funny because from the introduction it seems like Frankeur’s going to be a scene-stealer, which raises a question about whether or not Charm is unpredictable. I mean. Ghosts exist so anything’s on the table, which affects plot anticipation.

Because even though all the dream reveals are surprises, they’re never “gotchas.” Discreet Charm is never about being fantastical; the film’s incredibly grounded. Otherwise a bunch of the jokes wouldn’t work and Buñuel makes sure they work. There’s one about Americans where it’s edited to wait for the laughs. Excellent editing throughout from Hélène Plemiannikov.

The other technicals are similarly strong. Edmond Richard’s photography is a lot less flashy than Plemiannikov’s editing, Pierre Guffroy’s production design, or Jacqueline Guyot’s costumes, but Charm’s photography is appropriately clinical in its presentation. The film never feels stagy, but it does have long scenes in single locations. There’s a personality to the photography’s lack of personality, especially as Buñuel even trades on how reliably the photography showcases the sets. It’s all wonderfully intentional.

While The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie sometimes takes darker turns, it’s always genial and well-mannered, which is just the perfect tone.

Charm’s a rare, strange delight.