Category: Ratings

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, Alfred Hitchcock)

The Man Who Knew Too Much is an action thriller. It doesn’t start as an action thriller—it begins with an English family (dad Leslie Banks, mom Edna Best, daughter Nova Pilbeam) vacationing in Switzerland. Their vacation has almost come to an end, and they’re saying goodbye to some of their trip friends. Their good trip friend is flirty Frenchman Pierre Fresnay, but they’re also friendly with Peter Lorre and Frank Vosper. Lorre’s just another guest, while Vosper competes with Best in a shooting competition.

Then everyone gets together for dinner and dancing, while Best and Fresnay flirt in front of Banks—just for laughs—and so on. Except then Fresnay gets shot and drops dead, but not before he passes a message for Banks on to Best. Best relays the dying request to Banks, who has an intrigue scene before discovering someone has kidnapped daughter Pilbeam and, unless Best and Banks behave, they’ll never see her again.

At this point, the film moves back to England—the British agents know Banks knows something about Fresnay’s death, in addition to realizing the daughter’s been kidnapped and the parents aren’t participating. Slightly less obtuse agent George Curzon tries getting through to Banks but still gets the stonewall. Best and Banks have family friend Hugh Wakefield around to help with moral and adventuring support.

Curzon will only be significant in the film because it forgets about him. The film also forgets about Wakefield, but he does get to participate in some of the eventual action set pieces—always as comic relief. The film can function without Wakefield; he leaves just as Lorre takes over. But the Curzon situation’s more interesting. If the film didn’t forget about Curzon, it wouldn’t have a third act. See, Curzon knows Banks knows something. No one else in the movie will ever think Banks knows anything. He’s the Man Who Knew Too Much and all… but Too Much is a very relative term.

When Banks and Wakefield go investigating, trying to beat Curzon to the punch (silly, since his arc isn’t a thing), they discover a strange church of sun-worshippers who have something to do with Fresnay’s death and maybe Pilbeam’s kidnapping.

At this point, just over halfway through, the film becomes an action thriller with continuous action. It’s one set piece after another, including a hypnotizing scene, a brawl scene, a big shootout, and a complicated assassination scene. The film’s just a series of action set pieces, barely taped together with the characters and their respective plights. By the third act, almost all the heroes are in eminent danger—whether they know it or not—and the bad guys are getting desperate.

As an action thriller, Knew is superb–great direction from Hitchcock, who keeps the film and its proceedings incredibly quiet. There are no slam-bang sound effects during the fight scenes or the pile-ups, and Arthur Benjamin’s music always falls silent when it’s time for someone to do something dastardly. Or to fight back against dastardly doings. The film’s distinct and confident. Great photography from Curt Courant too. And Hugh Stewart’s editing is superb.

Unfortunately, there’s almost no story once the consecutive plotting takes over. There’s no character development; there’s no drama outside what will be solved through action violence. The film’s screenplay involved many hands–and five credited writers in one capacity or another (Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, Edwin Greenwood, A.R. Rawlinson, and Emlyn Williams). Not one of them gave it a story, which would be more impressive if the first act didn’t promise there was some grand conspiracy to unravel. Worse, we don’t know there wasn’t some grand conspiracy; we just know the writers and Hitchcock didn’t think it was worth delivering on that early promise at all. Or to even acknowledge it.

Luckily, there’s some outstanding acting to carry things along. Banks and Best are both excellent, though they never get to be excellent together. Instead, Banks gets his showcase in one location, and Best gets hers in another. Lorre’s spellbinding. Once he gets going, he sets the entire tone of the film. Hitchcock waits a while to hand it over, instead starting with Cicely Oates as his ominous companion. There are hints at Lorre, implications he’s going to be worth the wait, then he’s quadruple any of those promises. He’s exceptional.

Wakefield is good as the sidekick. Oates is good. Pilbeam’s fine. She’s a teenager in peril. She’s fine. She plays it really scared, though, which ends up making Knew seem insensitive to her. She’s British; she can’t experience trauma. Vosper’s barely okay, which is a bummer. He seems like he’ll have some depth, then doesn’t. Since the script’s not giving it to anyone, all dimension is thanks to the actors. Just not Vosper. He’s more than happy to play it flat.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a tight, taut seventy-six minutes. Great production, great performances, great pacing… lukewarm plotting.

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989, Bill Bixby)

Spoiler: there’s no trial in Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Except maybe the viewer’s difficulty getting through the TV movie. Or producer, director, and star Bixby doing a special effects heavy (but not for Hulk Lou Ferrigno) backdoor pilot for a “Daredevil” TV show starring very special guest star Rex Smith. Ferrigno’s so shoe-horned into the production he doesn’t even get to Hulk out in the third act.

Things are off from the start, which has Bixby working on a ranch—run by familiar-looking TV guest star Meredith Bain Woodward—only to leave when he’s being bullied too much. Don’t want to waste one of the three Ferrigno scenes on a ranch fight. Woodward warns Bixby if he heads to the city, it’ll suck his soul out. Now, the city never gets mentioned by name—it’s Vancouver—but when henchman Nicholas Hormann lists the various crime lords’ home bases, New York is left off the list and Daredevil’s traditionally New York.

And Trial’s New York City being in a quick hitchhike from the Canadian North Shore mountains or whatever… well, it sums up the production fairly well.

Most of the episode is about Smith trying to rescue third-billed Marta DuBois from John Rhys-Davies. Rhys-Davies is playing evil businessman Wilson Fisk (aka the Kingpin, though not in Trial), who wears his sunglasses both indoors and at night, and watches everything on video. The opening jewelry store heist sequence has the robbers setting up cameras so Rhys-Davies can see what they’re doing and instruct them. There are a few times throughout the movie where it’s clear someone did a lot of work getting all that video to show right in the final production. Shame Gerald Di Pego’s script doesn’t have similar levels of care.

Let me see if I can quickly summarize the contrivances. DuBois is on the same subway train as Bixby after the jewelry heist. Bad guys John Novak and Dwight Koss are also on the train, giddy after their successful robbery. Novak decides he’s going to rape DuBois. Koss seems iffy on it, but then agrees. After initially staying out of it, Bixby finally Hulks out, and it’s Ferrigno to the rescue.

Except after the cops arrest Bixby (post-Hulk out), DuBois tells them he was the one who assaulted her. It just doesn’t make sense to poor Bixby, who thinks he’s still in the more wholesome, early eighties era of primetime. Smith offers his services to Bixby—who goes from a jail cell to a prison cell without so much as a hearing (about halfway through Trial he has a scene about not being able into the courtroom because he’d let Ferrigno deal with it)—and Bixby reluctantly agrees. Basically because Smith is blind. DuBois is also nicer to Smith once she realizes he’s blind. It’d have been a wild “Daredevil” show; so many plot twists based on Smith being blind and people not realizing he’s got sonar vision.

After DuBois tells Smith what really happened, Rhys-Davies realizes there’s still another forty-five minutes, so he tells consigliere Hormann to kidnap her and use her as bait for Daredevil. No one in Vancouver New York has heard of the Incredible Hulk so it’s not really a team-up movie, at least not in terms of action set pieces. Hormann falls in love with DuBois, potentially complicating matters.

Can Bixby and Smith bond over their respective radioactive secrets and save her in time?

There’s very little for Bixby to do in Trial. Eventually, he plays big brother to Smith, who gets a whole “Daredevil Forever” arc in his first appearance, as Rhys-Davies is able to hit him in the ego. But until then, he’s got to stay busy in scenes with no plot arc for himself. Lots of small talk.

Smith’s got his whole potential series crew with him—love interest and law partner Nancy Everhard, Black guy who works at the office Richard Cummings Jr., Commissioner Gordon Joseph Mascolo, and then Hormann. Rhys-Davies clearly wasn’t showing up for every episode of “Daredevil,” and Hormann could be the stand-in. Apparently, the show would then feature the damsel-in-distress (so DuBois here) having to do multiple scenes being terrorized before Smith would rescue her.

DuBois gets a whole bunch to do. Multiple monologues about how shitty everyone is being to her even though she was the one who was almost raped. She gives one basically every fifteen minutes.

While DuBois is just okay—there’s nothing she can do with the part—she easily puts in the best work in the movie. Smith wants that series gig and tries hard, but no matter how game his performance, he’s bad. He’s sympathetic; he’s trying to make hash out of this terrible movie; still bad.

Trial is an arduous watch, except for counting Vancouver locations and plot holes. It’s not even fun for catching shots of Ferrigno in his Hulk booties. He’s always wearing them.

The morbidly curious might be interested in watching Bixby’s attempts at playing Fiege, but otherwise… beware.

Spider-Man: Photo Finish and Matter of State (1979, Tony Ganz and Larry Stewart)

I’d love to know the logic behind the episode arrangement in Photo Finish and Matter of State. Another “Amazing Spider-Man” compilation movie again puts the later episode first; while the series presumably didn’t have much in the way of season-long character arcs, it’s peculiar to see Nicholas Hammond and Ellen Bry’s relationship rewind in the second half. The movie has one an adjoining scene to tie the two together—they got Hammond and Chip Fields back, though not the sets—but the actual adjoining scene would be one explaining why Hammond and Bry went from near onscreen canoodling to asking their friends if the other one likes them in the second half. Well, practically.

The two episodes do share some similar themes. They’re about Peter Parker, News Man, which is how he describes himself throughout Photo Finish. It gets so gendered Robert F. Simon makes sure to explain—in 1979, mind—he supports “newspaper people,” not just news men. Hammond is covering a boring rare coin purchasing story—Geoffrey Lewis is apparently friends with Simon, which is funny on its own—when someone robs Lewis. Besides being about the freedom of the press, Finish and Matter are about how Hammond—despite his very obvious super-strength and accelerated healing powers—can be knocked unconscious like everyone else. Each episode’s plot depends on it. In the first half, I initially thought he was faking. By the second, I realized he gets the invulnerability from the suit.

Speaking of the suit… Hammond spends much of Finish in jail for contempt of court, yet he’s always changing into Spider-Man to bend the bars and go do adventures. Should we be asking where he keeps the suit?

It turns out Hammond’s passively participating in a frame-up—someone took a picture with his camera when he was unconscious, framing Lewis’s ex-wife Jennifer Billingsley for the robbery. The known villains are Kenneth O'Brien and Milt Kogan, playing a TV version of the Enforcers (Kogan’s the Ox, and I suppose O’Brien’s Fancy Dan, but they’d want to change it to make it more Irish). O’Brien plays his part like he’s auditioning for Lucky the Leprechaun’s evil brother.

Can Hammond unravel the mystery while staying ahead of the bad guys—who learn his secret identity (don’t worry, it goes nowhere)—and copper Charles Haid?

Obviously; there’s a whole other episode after the first one.

The second half has Bry in trouble; she snaps a picture of international bad guy Nicolas Coster while he’s doing espionage at the airport. He sends his goons, Michael Santiago and James Lemp, after her to get the camera. Then the film, then the negatives, then they’ve got to go kill her. Coster has to explain things multiple times, but it also pads out the runtime to a full episode.

Otherwise, it’s mostly just Hammond trying to get Simon (and Fields) to agree Bry deserves not to be murdered even if she does work at the rival newspaper. It’s also another episode where Fields and Hammond have much more potential romantic energy than Hammond and Bry, only for Fields to get dumped for the second half. And, given the events of the first episode, it introduces a strange, almost jealous vibe?

There are some great stunts—the finale has Hammond’s stunt man climbing the Empire State Building for an action scene (based on reused stock footage, both episodes also take place mostly around Times Square, Los Angeles County)—and Ganz’s direction of Photo Finish is downright good. Not so for Stewart’s direction on the second half, which struggles towards middling for a late seventies action show.

Lewis is a good guest star in the first half, something the second is sorely missing. The target demographic can’t pay attention long enough for Coster to explain all his international espionage stuff, so instead, it’s Hammond and Bry charmlessly bickering, which you’d also think the target demographic wouldn’t be interested in. Yet. Though trying to imagine what went so wrong between the two episodes for Hammond and Bry to be so awkward after seeing each other naked does keep the neurons firing while the movie’s not encouraging them.

The first half isn’t good but is fine. The second half isn’t fine. They really needed to finish with the better episodes.

But, again, Ganz. Ganz’s direction is excellent. Oh, and Billingsley is often quite good. Something’s very wrong with the editing on her scenes, or maybe they had to do a lot of takes, but she’s better than the show needs. Well, you’d think, but then the second half shows what happens when the show’s in need.

Anyway.

Ship Fields and Hammond. Always.

Spider-Man: Wolfpack and the Kirkwood Haunting (1979, Joseph Manduke and Don McDougall)

Wolfpack and the Kirkwood Haunting once again proves me very wrong in thinking these two-episode compilation movies were the way to watch the old “Amazing Spider-Man” show. However, that revision is less about the narrative packaging this time and more about the show itself. Independently or consecutively, Wolfpack and Kirkwood are stinkers. But the Wolfpack half is at least a fun stinker, whereas Kirkwood is mind-numbingly dull. Except when Spider-Man (Nicholas Hammond or his stunt man) fights a lion, and a bear; oh, my.

Wolfpack also has the much better guest stars. While Gavin O’Herlihy and Will Seltzer are fairly dull as Hammond’s grad school buddies, Allan Arbus plays the villain. He’s a shitty scientist turned middling middle manager who has been overseeing O’Herlihy’s grant from Dolph Sweet’s chemical company. When O’Herlihy accidentally discovers mind control mist, Arbus sees his chance to finally get rich. However, instead of robbing a bank or anything simple, he does things like getting O’Herlihy and his sidekicks to steal a Gutenberg Bible or brainwashing the local military base into helping him pull a heist.

Arbus is phoning it in, but with enough energy it’s fun to watch him seventies camp it in a Spider-Man. Chip Fields has been helping out O’Herlihy and Seltzer—in their unregulated human experimentation trials they’re all obviously doing—so she gets to be in the main plot, and she’s delightful. Even when the scenes are dull exposition full of fake science words for eight-year-old boys who talked their parents into letting them watch prime time, Fields is a delight. Other series regulars Robert F. Simon and Ellen Bry are around a bit—Simon’s a gruff old grandpa in this half, much different than his “We blue bloods need to stick together (with international arms dealers)” in the second. But Wolfpack treats Bry like garbage, as though her agent demanded they shoehorn her in, so her scenes are usually just Hammond telling her to go away because she’s not part of the main cast.

Bry does a little better in the second half (Wolfpack and Kirkwood are compiled in reverse order, presumably because there’s never any character development, so what does it matter). Simon has Hammond go check on his arms dealer friend’s widow, a suffering (the role) but earnest Marlyn Mason, who’s getting shaken down by psychic huckster Peter MacLean. Hammond’s supposed to suss out whether Mason is actually haunted or if it’s fake. Given the first scene with Mason seemingly unintentionally reveals it’s fake—MacLean’s sidekick, Paul Carr, starts the episode (sorry, half) as the medium but then becomes the sound van guy. It’s like no one can see him except MacLean. Wait a second… he’s just walking around like a regular person….

Anyway. Much like there being wild animals all around the mansion who terrorize Bry and Mason at various times but are never a danger to the actual villains, so there are no good comeuppance scenes, Kirkwood misses any opportunities it might (accidentally) have.

Manduke's Wolfpack direction is nothing spectacular, but it’s much better than McDougall’s attempts at sophisticated suspense. Though MacLean’s such a hack, Kirkwood never has a chance. Maybe if he’d brought some Arbus-level scorn to it, but no. Kirkwood tasks MacLean with more than he can handle.

Also, Fields is barely in Kirkwood, which is a bummer. While Bry’s better when she’s not just around for Hammond to clown on, Fields’s the closest thing to a breakout in Spider-Man. She’s at least got a personality.

There are some decent stunts, occasionally solid music from Dana Kaproff (and occasionally not), but Wolfpack and Kirkwood is bland and blah.

The Nightingale (2018, Jennifer Kent)

While The Nightingale never gets more brutal than in its first hour—it runs two and a quarter—it’s almost more hopeless with less viciousness. The film’s about how the British slaughtered the Aboriginal Australians. It’s about quite a bit more, but the historical context is Australia in the early nineteenth century when people could still buy prisoners for themselves. The film opens with protagonist Aisling Franciosi starting her day on an army base in Tasmania. She’s got a husband (Michael Sheasby) and a baby. She and Sheasby were both convicts; he’s gotten his freedom, but she’s still waiting for hers. Her fate is in the hands of army lieutenant Sam Claflin. Claflin’s an outpost officer with big ambitions, despite his unspectacular command and his gang of misfit soldiers, sergeanted by Damon Herriman.

Claflin has to protect comely Franciosi from his men, who he keeps as drunk as possible. Sheasby works as a blacksmith at the outpost; they live in their own hut away from the camp. Claflin regularly rapes Franciosi, something Sheasby doesn’t know about.

Writer and director Kent hammers in the reality, scene by scene. It’s a violent, merciless approach, but it makes Nightingale a singular character study. The film starts when Claflin’s getting inspected by higher-up Ewen Leslie for a promotion. He’s already on edge when Sheasby’s had just about enough waiting about Franciosi’s release. Most of Nightingale is split between Franciosi’s perspective and Claflin’s. It changes in the third act, as Kent slightly changes the narrative distance. Nightingale is always about how Kent’s presenting the information; a lot of it is about what information the characters have and at what time.

The horrific showdown between Claflin and Sheasby establishes the film’s first hour. Claflin’s half of the film is about him and Herriman trying to teach new soldier Harry Greenwood how to be a proper British officer and kill and rape whoever you can. They’re traveling north inland, by foot, so Claflin can assume a new command and run away from Franciosi. Claflin tries to convince Greenwood there’s never any reason to worry about accountability, but it’s never quite clear how much he thinks his golden boy status will carry him. He’s a charming narcissist, and he keeps everyone around him drunk enough to be forever pliable.

Claflin’s great. Like, Franciosi’s great, but she gets to weather being battered on screen for the point of battering. Nightingale isn’t about how a bad thing happened to Franciosi, and she did these things in reaction to the events. It’s about how the only things for Franciosi were bad things. And Claflin has to embody the whole thing against her. It’s a monumental villain part–and Claflin’s great.

Franciosi’s going to follow Claflin and company and kill them. She’s a poor kid from Ireland who ended up in the Australian prison colony; she’s not going to mess around. But she’s going to need a guide. Except Franciosi’s a big-time racist because you really can’t have your exploited groups comparing notes as you’re exploiting them. Baykali Ganambarr plays her guide. He lost his family when he was a kid. Franciosi doesn’t want to share the pain with him because she doesn’t want to acknowledge his humanity. But he’s the only one who can get her to Claflin in time to kill him, so she’s going to make it work.

Nightingale is a revenge picture. The story Franciosi’s telling herself is one of righteous vengeance; it’s keeping her going. Ganambarr is just doing a job. Claflin’s just doing a job. How the characters perceive themselves plays into how all of them will react to one another along this physically arduous journey. Franciosi is a racist shit who doesn’t want to be traveling with Ganambarr. Still, she doesn’t understand everybody else is a racist shit who doesn’t want Ganambarr traveling along with her either. More than not wanting him traveling, they don’t want him existing. Nightingale takes place during a particularly intense period of genocide, which Ganambarr doesn’t know about until he’s already mixed up in Franciosi’s vengeance quest.

Their relationship—an acquaintanceship of mutually assured destruction—is the most complicated thing Kent does in Nightingale. Ganambarr shows up relatively late in the first act, and it’s even longer before he’s able to piece together Franciosi’s purpose. Everyone in Nightingale acts with their own agenda. The film implies partnerships are possible but rare. Kent spends most of the time in the wilderness. The time spent with the “settlers” is limited and precisely crafted. The audience is foreign to everything in Nightingale, but the characters are also foreign to many things. Ganambarr and Franciosi have very different experiences than the settlers; the British army ensures that separation by force. Kent’s very delicate about setting up all those scenes. How Kent angles the narrative distance is just as important as her composition. Nightingale mainlines its horrors.

Franciosi and Ganambarr are awesome. They don’t have the same weights as Claflin, but they also have much more to do. Their character arcs are sublime. Nightingale has exquisite cuts courtesy Simon Njoo. The way the performances carry between shots, through cuts is breathtaking. Kent does an amazing job directing Nightingale. She shoots it standard Academy ratio, so it’s a closer to square image, and she focuses on composing for the vertical. There are lots of great long shots, with beautiful lighting by Radek Ladczuk, and the composition is all about the horizon. The film doesn’t have many technical patterns, but during the first and second acts, Njoo will cut between parallel shots, creating something like a “widescreen” effect. Later in the film, when the narrative’s more aligned to Franciosi and Ganambarr, the shots still emphasize the vertical, and there are still establishing montages, but the focus is narrowed. Franciosi and Ganambarr can only see so much.

Great supporting turns from Herriman, Greenwood, Magnolia Maymuru, and Charlie Jampijinpa Brown.

The Nightingale is an extremely tough, rough piece of work. It’s exceptional.

Hit! (1973, Sidney J. Furie)

Hit! is multiple movies all at once. It’s a heist procedural, with Billy Dee Williams putting together an unlikely crew of experts to take out the Marseille heroin syndicate. It’s a rogue secret agent movie—Williams’s boss, a profoundly under-cast Norman Burton, doesn’t want him showing up the U.S. government by taking out the bad guys. It’s a muted, detached character drama; Williams is after the Marseille gang because his teenage daughter died from a heroin overdose, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to avenge her, even as it makes him a much worse person. It’s an anti-drug movie, though very careful to humanize the addict. Astoundingly problematic humanizing, but the effort is sincere. It’s anti-lesbian. There’s a little homophobia with Richard Pryor doing an impression, but there’s a lot of anti-lesbian stuff (his impression involves making fun of lesbians). One of the villains is a woman who forces herself on various unwilling but terrified young ladies. It’s exceptionally anti-French. All of the French people—except maybe the evil lesbian—are gluttonous caricatures.

And, finally, it’s a McDonald’s commercial. There’s not just McDonald’s product placement; one of the characters frequently laments the lack of good Mickey D’s in France.

As a heist procedural, Hit!’s exceptional. Director Furie has this great device to show where Williams is going (he’s got to travel the continental United States to put together his team), always showing a license plate in the establishing shot. The first seventy or eighty minutes is Williams putting the team together. In addition to Pryor—an underwater demolitions expert whose (way too young) wife was murdered by a junkie—there are another six team members. It ought to be seven more team members, but Hit! wants all the heist details to be surprises, so we never find out how Williams adjusts when fate changes his plans.

There’s sniper, Renaissance man, racist, and drug smuggler Paul Hampton. Hit! takes full advantage of the Vietnam War allowing for various demographics to have the types of skills Williams needs. Hampton and Pryor are both Vietnam veterans, though there’s no bonding between those two. Hampton does appear to bond with San Francisco tough cop Warren J. Kemmerling, the surveillance man. Gwen Welles is an Ivy League French club superstar turned working girl and—more importantly—functioning heroin addict, which Williams leverages for her participation. Everyone else has a relevant heist skill; Welles apparently is just a fetching young woman who speaks French. She falls for Williams, who’s got no time for love (much less with a heroin addict).

Lastly, there’s older adult couple Janet Brandt and Sid Melton. They have a very particular set of skills but have gone straight and are running a lunch counter. Their son recently died from an overdose. Hit!’s got a lot of good acting, but Brandt and Melton get to show the most heart. They’re lovable. Even though Pryor’s likable, relatable, and sometimes adorable, he’s not lovable in the same way. Welles is very sympathetic, especially as Williams tries to motivate her through cruelty, but she’s not lovable. Hampton’s always a prick. Kemmerling’s fun, albeit a piece of shit cop (the film’s careful to only show him roughing up white hippies, who are all into heroin anyway).

And then Williams. It’s a fantastic lead performance from Williams. He manages to survive all the silliness the film throws at him, which mostly involves CIA boss Burton sending goons after him. Zooey Hall and Todd Martin play the goons. They’re assholes but amusing (purposefully), while Burton’s a lukewarm dishrag. They really missed their chance on the stunt cast. But Williams also has the worst third act heist action. Heist with an asterisk; they’re all on assassination runs (the film’s not shy about a Godfather nod either). Williams gets the silliest, least dramatic one. While Argyle Nelson Jr.’s editing is sublime, cutting between subplots, even he can’t compensate for Williams’s heist focus being so inert.

Technically, the film’s phenomenal. Furie and cinematographer John A. Alonzo do gorgeous work. Everything’s exceptionally deliberate and thoughtful during the setup and training phases of the film, while the conclusion—set in Marseille—is hurried. There are occasional shades of the earlier quiet, but once the action starts, it never lets up. Until the ill-advised epilogue.

Great music from Lalo Schifrin. It occasionally seems like it’s not fitting—Schifrin’s almost always doing a score for the drama, particularly with the various members of the gang—but it always works out thanks to Furie. Furie also does an outstanding job with the actors, particularly Williams, but also Pryor, Welles, and—of course—Brandt.

Hit!’s got a rocky finish, but it’s an excellent, distinctive picture.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)

Dial of Destiny opens with a very long prologue flashback to 1945, setting up Harrison Ford (a CGI-de-aged Ford) having Toby Jones as a best buddy in the forties during the war and running afoul of Nazi scientist Mads Mikkelsen. The flashback’s technically successful; de-aged Ford looks pretty good (the eyes are off, and the expressions are static), but the sequence itself is kind of pointless. It’s ostensibly to start on an action sequence with Ford, but it’s a tolerable action sequence. Director Mangold—the first and presumably last director to pick up Spielberg’s whip for a theatrical Indiana Jones—will do great action sequences later on, but this first one feels like a video game cutscene. And having a computer-generated lead certainly doesn’t do anything to dissuade that feeling.

But once they’ve established Ford and Jones know each other, Jones is obsessed with Archimedes’s Antikythera device, and Mikkelsen is also after the Antikythera, the flashback’s done its work, and it’s time to jump ahead twenty-four years. Ford’s already done the Indiana Jones legacy sequel, which turned canon on its head, and now they’re doing a second legacy sequel, but it’s also basically a legacy sequel (coming fifteen years after that entry). So we’ve got all sorts of first act establishing to do: Ford’s been a settled down college professor for ten years, happily married to Karen Allen for some of them, but after son Shia LeBeouf died off-screen in Vietnam—he enlisted to piss off Ford which fails some basic logic tests if you start doing the math on LaBeouf’s age, but whatever… he’s not back.

Instead, Dial of Destiny introduces Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Jones’s grown-up daughter, who’s also after the Antikythera. After her is Mikkelsen, who spent the post-war being coddled by the U.S. government so he could get them to the moon before the Russians. He’s got a Black woman CIA handler (Shaunette Renée Wilson, who brings more to it than the role deserves), a redneck henchman (Boyd Holbrook, who maybe shouldn’t have trusted Mangold it’d be a good part), and a giant (Olivier Richters) helping him in the quest. Dial pulls no Nazi punches—it’s a Disney movie, after all, and they’re fighting fascists in real-life these days—but it’s fairly tepid with the American race relations. Holbrook really doesn’t like Wilson because she’s Black (and a woman), but he can’t say anything because political correctness. Meanwhile, Mikkelsen isn’t the standard Indiana Jones Nazi… he’s even more invested in the ideology than most. Because Nazis, even removed from the mid-twentieth century, are really dangerous and shouldn’t be ignored or placated.

Waller-Bridge shows up in New York City for Ford’s retirement—which seems to have been decided after they filmed Ford giving a lecture on the morning of the Apollo 11 parade (he’s telling the kids what’s on their final, but he’s apparently leaving right after that class)—and asks for his help with the Antikythera. Only she’s not being super honest, and since it’s 1969, Ford can’t just Google her.

The adventure will take them to North Africa, then the Mediterranean, where they can pick up various sidekicks, and there will be time for cameos from the other movies. Though very limited cameos; the franchise put all its eggs in a LeBeouf-sized basket last time, after all. Waller-Bridge has her own Short Round (spoiler: no cameo from Ke Huy Quan, which is too bad) in Ethann Isidore. And then Ford brings in Antonio Banderas to help just when it seems like there’s no more room for supporting characters.

The film will have some big third act surprises regarding supporting cast introductions, but the second act is where Dial of Destiny’s gears work up their momentum. Turns out Mangold can direct character-paced action scenes (something entirely missing from the opening), and Waller-Bridge and Ford are fun together. Though when it’s them and Isidore trying to beat the Nazis to the treasure, it’s painfully obvious the franchise missed a big opportunity for Indiana Jones Family with Ford, Allen, and, well, LeBeouf, I guess. Thanks to Waller-Bridge, it still works out with Dial’s configuration, but it’d have been nice for the four screenwriters to come up with a less comprised story.

In all, it’s mostly a success. The technicals are all sturdy without being exemplary, with Phedon Papamichael’s photography being the easy standout. John Williams’s score isn’t bad. It isn’t particularly good, but it isn’t bad. Excellent costumes from Joanna Johnston, which compensate for Adam Stockhausen’s surprisingly pedestrian production design. Thank goodness Papamichael’s lighting it.

Once he gets to act the part instead of his CGI counterpart doing it, Ford has some good moments. It’s a rough part, mostly because he’s trying to incorporate so much hackneyed plotting from previous entries. Waller-Bridge is tabula rosa and can zoom past Ford, but she keeps pace with Ford thanks to her timing and Mangold’s direction. He maintains a steady clip at eighty years old (playing seventy), but there aren’t any Indiana Jones endless punch-outs this sequel. No Ben Burtt punches.

Mikkelsen’s great. Isidore’s fine. Banderas is fun. Holbrook’s a good piece of shit? Maybe don’t get typecast. And good little turn from Thomas Kretschmann in the prologue.

Dial of Destiny is too long, too digital, and too trepidatious.

But, otherwise, it’s aces.

A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941, Henry King)

Betty Grable has a rough time in A Yank in the R.A.F. through no fault of her own. Her love triangle arc is the only thing going on for long stretches of the film. Despite being about brash narcissist Tyrone Power (the Yank) going over to England and joining the R.A.F.—while the U.S. was still operating under the Congressional Neutrality Acts (so pre-pre-Pearl Harbor)—Power doesn’t really have much of an arc. He’s eventually got the war story love triangle arc, as he and his commanding officer (the objectively less handsome and charming John Sutton) compete for Grable’s attentions. Power has a leg up (no pun) since he and Grable were together a year before when he ditched her for a long weekend to cat around with someone else.

Whenever Power has a scene where the story’s not following him, the introduction involves him trying to pick up on some lady. Nurses, mostly, but also British housewives. Given Grable’s working nights singing and dancing in a night club and doing Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) work during the day, she’s got dancing friends around, but they’re the only women Power doesn’t pick up on. The script feigns he’s a hopeless flirt—I mean, he’s Tyrone Power, after all, is he going to waste those gifts on one woman—but then he’s very intentional about catting around. It’s shitty.

Of course, all the dudes feel pretty entitled when it comes to Grable. Not dudes who know her, either. While she does meet Sutton at the airbase, he goes to call on her after drooling over her night-club performance. The recurring gag is fellow airman Reginald Gardiner is Grable’s biggest fan and, despite working with both Power and Sutton (even before Power and Sutton work together), he can’t get an introduction. In a better movie, Grable and Gardiner end up together, mostly because he’s got nothing insincere to woo her with. Power woos her with him being Tyrone Power and their physical chemistry—making things awkwarder is how well Power and Grable play together (at least at the beginning), but then he’s just a manipulative, sometimes way too physical prick–while Sutton’s a rich British gentleman. He can marry her and turn her into… well, if not a capital l lady, at least a lowercase l one. The film skirts around the respectability angle a few times, but it’s still there.

And still problematic.

In addition to having the most sympathetic characters, Grable and Gardiner easily gives the film’s best performances. Sutton and Power are both too shallow, albeit on opposite ends of the pond (pun). Sutton’s performance doesn’t have any passion or implication of it. As a result, when he courts Grable, she’s left mooning over someone who does nothing but try to negotiate a marriage contract with her. But he and Power also don’t bicker about R.A.F. business. The title’s A Yank in the R.A.F. and all, but Power’s experiences don’t matter until the third act when he gets to show those Germans what an American can do.

Another strange, timely aspect–Yank is all about showcasing the British war effort (with some phenomenal aerial photography), but it’s also about how they’re a bunch of wimps who will need the U.S. to save them one of these days. Sadly Power never reminds anyone he’s why they’re not speaking German from last time (also, the way the opening narration says “current war” is chilling).

But Power doesn’t have an arc, either. Yes, he gets more serious about his duties. But immediately. He’s supposedly the best flier the R.A.F. has got if they’d only give him a chance. It doesn’t go anywhere. He and Sutton go through a whole crash-landing arc, and it doesn’t go anywhere. At best, Power’s arc is meandering. More often, it’s either entirely stalled or entirely beside the point, so the film can focus on Grable having to choose between the dreamboat who mistreats her and the stiff upper lip who can buy her all the ponies she’ll ever want. Or something.

Grable does admirably well—she even keeps it together for the finale’s multiple big disses–and Yank’s often a great-looking film. Not sure why director King decides, somewhere in the second act, to try for moody lighting, though. Cinematographer Leon Shamroy ably pulls it off, but it just distracts. Though it’s distracting from Sutton and Power being dramatically inert, so… success?

But the version where Grable and Gardiner–Showgirl in the W.A.A.F.—is probably much better.

This post is part of the Betty Grable Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

Big News (1929, Gregory La Cava)

Big News is a successful talking picture, meaning they do a good job recording the synchronized vocals. It’s not successful at really anything else, but the sound’s decent. Someone had the idea of keeping the number of actors low in most scenes, which helps with vocal clarity. Possibly too much because editor Doane Harrison and director La Cava hang on every spoken sentence. It’s peculiar—though not uncommon for the era—but News is early enough even the actors don’t know to mug around yet. They stand static, waiting for whatever’s supposed to happen next. It makes every conversation take twice as long as it should, and Big News is all conversation.

The film’s a stage adaptation—and a stagy one at that—about newspaper reporter Robert Armstrong going up against speakeasy owner and heroin peddler Sam Hardy. Despite not hiding the speakeasy part of his business from anyone, the advertising editor at the paper—Louis Payne—thinks Hardy is entirely aboveboard. Armstrong’s just an angry drunk out to persecute the American entrepreneur—Hardy’s speakeasy is run out of his… restaurant, which advertises in the newspaper. The long pauses in News would be perfect spots for the actors to turn to the cameras and ask the audience if they’re buying this shit.

But it’s Pre-Code, so you get to hear people say the word narcotics (and heroin, too; I’m nearly positive). Armstrong bickers with Hardy’s thugs about who’s got the more problematic profession, the newspaperman trying to report on thugs selling drugs to kids or the thug selling drugs to kids who has to be derided in the press. Though the cops aren’t happy with the newspapers either, since the newspapers don’t care about using any old surname for the Irish coppers.

Surely second-billed Carole Lombard, Armstrong’s estranged wife and professional competitor, will come in and offer some life to the movie.

Nope.

Lombard’s just around to whine about Armstrong. She’s the better reporter, and she’s able to get home on time (even when they’re talking about her scooping Armstrong on an overnight story where she was reporting, and he was sleeping off another bender). There are shockingly honest scenes with Lombard and Armstrong’s news editor, Wade Boteler, about how she should divorce him because he’s a useless drunk. He just happens to be a worthless drunk who can get a great scoop now and again, making it up as he goes sometimes, so it’s lucky Hardy’s a hilariously bad Mr. Big. Not bad as in acting—Armstrong, Hardy, and maybe Boteler are the only ones who seem to get the acting bit of voice acting, though incredibly problematic (though potentially progressive) Ms. Lonely Hearts Helen Ainsworth is okay too. But Hardy’s an inept criminal mastermind who lets his ego destroy him.

The bad performances are Charles Sellon as the newspaper owner, who protects Armstrong but not too far, and Warner Richmond as the assistant district attorney, who seemingly learned he was expected to speak about a minute before La Cava called “action.”

La Cava’s direction’s a series of medium shots. I think only Armstrong and Hardy ever get close-ups. Lombard definitely doesn’t get any; the movie has no idea what to do with a lady in the picture, much less Lombard. I’m curious if the original play gave the character something to do.

Oh, and then there’s James Donlan as Armstrong’s drunk reporter pal. It’s unclear whether Donlan has a job other than being drunk all the time and a bad influence on Armstrong. It’s an early enough talkie they haven’t figured out Donlan ought to be a great supporting performance. He’s not.

Big News is only seventy-five minutes and somewhat worth the curiosity peek—Armstrong and Hardy would much more memorably team (for a scene) in King Kong; it’s an early misuse of Lombard, and there are some recognizable faces. Clarence Wilson plays the coroner; apparently, Lew Ayres is around somewhere. But it’s still really long for seventy-five minutes. That time can be better spent on the cast and crew’s other pictures.

Spider-Man: The Con Caper and the Curse of Rava (1978, Tom Blank and Michael Caffey)

In a more modern context, The Con Caper and the Curse of Rava take on additional depth. First, there’s convicted state or federal senator (or congressman) William Smithers. He’s a white guy who once upon a time gave Black woman Chip Fields her first chance in the early seventies after she would’ve spent most of her life living during the Civil Rights movement. So being Smithers’s trusted sidekick would’ve meant a lot.

It’d sure be terrible if Smithers turned out to be a sociopath, just a charming one.

In the second half—Caper is two episodes of “The Amazing Spider-Man” TV show joined together for syndication and home video, which is how “TV on DVD” worked until… DVD—but the second half’s big eyebrow raise is how the show manages to be shitty towards villain Theodore Bikel while lionizing capitalist imperialism. Bikel’s from Kalistan, which is presumably based on someone in the writers’ room—Robert Janes (which I swear is a pseudonym in something) gets the credit for Curse—but someone heard of Khalistan, a still unsuccessful (going 300 plus years now) attempt by the Sikh to get their own homeland.

So, Curse is also a great example of how Hollywood media ransacked the cultures and histories of the entire world under the premise: Americans are too dumb to know, then they’re too dumb to care, then they’re just not watching the show–the great balance.

Curse isn’t about Sikh homelands, of course. It’s about a cult of Kalistani dissidents led by dark pope Bikel (no, really, he’s the pope of the group) who want to steal their historical Rava statue—their god of destruction (while Rava’s scary looking, not cool, and buff, he’s also very male, even though—wait, am I getting made they didn’t use Shiva or something? Look at me retroactively enabling this shit).

Anyway.

The statue’s in New York City because the current Kalistan administration wants those American greenbacks, in this case, delivered (or couriered) by none other than Daily Bugle CEO and “Spider-Man” regular J. Jonah Jameson (Robert F. Simon). Simon’s dead wife was big into getting relics into their private blue blood museum, and he’s continuing the tradition in her honor. He’s a justified Karen in his imperialist looting.

Bikel threatens museum guy Byron Webster with telekinetic feats, pointlessly witnessed by closest-thing-to-a-love-interest Adrienne Larussa. She’s not an actual love interest for Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond), but she fills the slot. She’s actually in an antagonist position for most of the episode.

Half.

Whatever.

Even though they use South Asian visual imagery for some of the protesting cult members—the ladies, the dudes are all just white seventies hippies—Curse isn’t sure how to write this made-up fantastical religion, so they add this anti-Muslim bent to it. Like some of Bikel’s dialogue. It’s a lot.

Even though Bikel’s barely in the episode. He’s a long-shot villain who stares at something until Hammond’s Spider-sense goes off.

All right, now. We’re mostly out of ways Caper Curse ages horrifically. There’s obviously lots of veiled and unveiled misogyny, and general weird classism, but I think the specifics are done. Now for the problem of tying these two episodes together. Con is Fields’s episode; she even sings a song. But it’s about Simon trusting Fields—he’s a shitty blue-blood Karen in the late seventies dealing with all these damn kids and their TokTiks—even after Fields was wrong to trust Smithers. Fields has to eat a little crow, but most of it’s internal. And Smithers turns out to have really broken bad. Not just a little.

But there’s also the Caper part. Everyone says “con” a lot; everyone says “caper” a lot. The writer—this time credited to Gregory S. Dinallo—wants to make sure the viewers in the audience who’d just learned to read title cards, know the episode’s called The Con Caper. It’s weird. The first half of Caper Curse is this seventies groovy with decent guest stars Andrew Robinson and Ramon Bieri as two prisoners who stage a riot in a ruse to get recently released and now prison reformer Smithers back into the prison. Only from the outside, obviously.

Apparently, traditional spoiler rules do not apply to compilation TV movies. But since Caper is from season two and Curse is from season one, the whole premise is a spoiler for Curse. However, no one’s really in danger in Curse. It’s mostly about Simons being falsely accused, so they can have vaguely amusing scenes with Simons yelling at Hammond from his jail cell. Then Michael Pataki also gets all these weird scenes with Simons where Pataki’s got to be suspicious of Simons because he’s reporting seeing telekinesis stuff. Except Simons clearly said no to doing the jackass scene on film, so Pataki’s always talking about the report Simons gave. So Pataki’s got to say the silly comic book shit. And he hates it. It’s not a good episode for Pataki, but it’s his most sympathetic. Having to put up with Simons’s Karening is too far.

There are some amusing changes between the episodes besides Pataki being gone in the first one (because he didn’t come back) and being around for the second. His replacement in season two is Ellen Bry, an annoying capable young woman who wants to hang out with Hammond for some reason. She works at another paper, so she’s also covering Smithers and the prison stuff. But Fields has a decently sized Afro in the first episode, which she doesn’t have in season one. She was very close-cropped in season one. Okay, wait, no… Fields’s hair can make sense.

See, she cuts it after episode one, which is from season two, then it’s super short in the bridging addition—which takes place on a sitcom family kitchen set, and you can practically hear someone say “Action”—then it grows back a little for the second episode.

Hammond’s hair is shorter in season two than in season one but even shorter than season two in the bridging scene. So it makes no sense. Also, whoever wrote the bridging dialogue either didn’t give a shit about Curse’s first act or was eye-rolling it.

The first half’s totally passable late seventies mainstream groovy–so much music from Dana Kaproff. Everything’s got music. It’s awesome. Sort of. It’s fun. Or close enough to it.

The second half’s basically “Spider-Man” doing “Ghost Story.” Even when Hammond’s got a powered supervillain like Bikel, we’re years from a live-action superhero fight. It’s as if it took Westerns ten years to have actual horses.

The direct’s low middling. Technicals are competent.

If there’d been a better second episode—because you forget the transition problems fairly quickly thanks to Curse looking completely and utterly different, including film stock—Caper Curse probably would’ve worked out? Curse is just an unpleasant episode. The B plot is Simons’s jail arc. Oh, and Hammond stalking Larussa and mansplaining to her. He’s a jackass.

What a way to react to being kidnapped with your coworkers… growing your hair, digging out that suit jacket, buttoning your shirt, and being mean to people.

I’d said these compilation pictures might be the right way to watch the ever-unavailable “Amazing Spider-Man” TV show, but I’m reconsidering.