No Sudden Move (2021, Steven Soderbergh)

I spent most of No Sudden Move hoping against hope it’d somehow end well. Unfortunately, by the end of Move, I’d forgotten it started as a potential pulpy franchise for Don Cheadle (twenty-five years after Devil in a Blue Dress maybe he could get the one he deserved). The third act is such a slog, the stunt cameo reveal is so protracted, and the “real world” reveal is so labored, I’d forgotten what the movie was even ostensibly about.

No Sudden Move, if the stylized opening titles, the stylized music, and the stylized visuals (director Soderbergh and cinematographer “Peter Andrews” shoot the entire thing with slight fisheye lens) don’t give it away, is a series of homages to various film noir classics. There are some very obvious homages, then some less obvious ones, then the ones where recycling now familiar homages thanks to other movies using the same homage device. After a very gimmicky and very effective first act MacGuffin, it’s clear there’s not going to be anything new to Move so might as well enjoy the good acting, directing, and nostalgia.

It works until the third act, which goes entirely awry starting with a very bad stunt cameo. At first it seems like the second half is going to be all stunt cameos but when Kevin Scollin turns out not to be Steve Guttenberg, then the single stunt cameo is just… unfortunate. The twists and turns of the third act are all unfortunate as well; Move’s never ambitious—aggressively racist Italian mob flunky Benicio Del Toro abuse of Black man Cheadle ends in their second scene together and while there’s a little more to the female characters than you’d expect in a fifties noir… there’s not much more (and we’re not counting Soderbergh’s fisheye thing as ambitious, he’s just carrying a gag on too long)—but it’s always pretty good. The film finds a decent balance of dangerous and engaging. It’s never quirky, but it’s occasionally wry.

And Cheadle’s great.

Del Toro’s really good too, but the part’s not as good. Then as the film progresses, Cheadle’s part gets worse and Del Toro’s follows suit. David Harbour—playing the suburban dad whose family is in danger from hired guns Cheadle, Del Toro, and a very effective Kieran Culkin—is third-billed. He gets a lot to do but not really. Ditto cop Jon Hamm. Move assembles a picture perfect cast and gives them very little to do. Cheadle at least gets something to do for long stretches of the film. No one else.

Lots of good acting in the supporting parts. Brendan Fraser’s the guy who puts the job together, Ray Liotta and Bill Duke are the warring local crime bosses who both have it out for Cheadle, Amy Seimetz as Harbour’s wife. There really aren’t any female roles. Seimetz gets more than everyone else, but she’s still mostly there to support Harbour or son Noah Jupe. Jupe’s okay. It’d be better if he were better.

It’d be better if the writing for him were better too.

Hamm in particular is completely wasted.

Harbour’s good, but it’s far from a breakout part or performance. The third-billing is a bit of deceptive aggrandizing.

I’m tempted to give a list of movies to watch instead of No Sudden Move, which is far from the reaction I wanted to have. Even with the fisheye, I was rooting for No Sudden Move and making a lot of allowances for Ed Solomon’s script. But the third act is just too much of a mess. And Soderbergh completely gives up on it with the directing too; after waiting for him to leverage the fisheye the entire movie (there’s maybe one shot of Harbour where the fisheye emphasizes his perspective), Soderbergh has to go high contrast to hide the lack of budget and it looks really, really bad. Twelve year-olds filming toy dinosaurs in their backyards with Super 8s have done better action shots.

No Sudden Move’s not not a waste of time and energy. There’s good acting but for nothing.

The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin), the extended director’s cut

The extended director’s cut of The Exorcist runs ten minutes longer than the theatrical version. The last time I saw the theatrical, I thought the movie needed some more time to figure itself out. Turns out I was wrong. The ten extra minutes just make it sort of tiresome. Like, the third act of the film—with the lengthy actual exorcism sequence—is already a slog without having to slog through to get to it.

The first two acts of The Exorcist is a series of vignettes, intentionally doing a stilted summary. Director Friedkin, cinematography Owen Roizman, editors Evan Lottman and Norman Gay—even screenwriter William Peter Blatty—it’s all for effect. The film oscillates between Hollywood movie star living in Georgetown to film a movie dealing with daughter Linda Blair’s seemingly neurological decline and local priest Jason Miller’s family problems. Miller’s mom is sick and broke and he went to Ivy League schools on the Church’s dime to become a psychologist and it’s not like the Church is going to pay for her health care. Eventually the two storylines converge, with some (delicate) prodding from the script, and the film slowly moves out of summary for the third act.

Except it’s just for the exorcism. And the exorcism is long and boring (I mean, it’s a Catholic service). The film entirely loses momentum, especially since everything else building fizzles in the third act. After being simultaneously under intense focus and ignored, top-billed Ellen Burstyn’s disappearance becomes all the more obvious. It’s no longer about Blair getting better, it’s about Max von Sydow and Miller fighting the evil one.

Also, was it so obvious in the original version when Miller doesn’t mention to von Sydow how the demons possessing Blair requested him—von Sydow—by name? It’s a major plot hole and removes the oomph of von Sydow’s reappearance in the film. The Exorcist opens with a lengthy prologue set in Iraq where priest-archeologist von Sydow gets worked up over some recent relic finds and is overly dramatic about it. It’s long, seemingly pointless, utterly competent and occasionally inspired—kind of a metaphor for the film succeeding it—it’s a distinctive non sequitur of an opening. But when von Sydow comes back–actually coincidentally even though Miller’s heard a tape of Blair’s demons saying the character’s name—the prologue retroactively loses the distinct factor. It’s just a prologue.

Though von Sydow isn’t going to save the day with archeology, he’s going to do it with a good old-fashioned exorcism, which the film’s been building to since the opening titles and amped up with doctor after doctor failing Blair so they’re going to need an Exorcist. It’s inevitable. Though it’d be amazing if they hadn’t tied the threads together and it was just character studies.

Anyway.

The third act’s a wash. The epilogue sort of saves things. The exorcism scene never looks as good as it should. Not the special effects, which are fine (also pea soup is gross) or better, but the visual scheme Friedkin and Roizman go with for the third act. They just don’t crack it. The rest of the movie, they’ve got it down. But inside Burstyn’s house for the battle with the Dark Lord… Friedkin and Roizman don’t have it.

I sort of knew the “extended director’s cut”—director’s definitive cut–wouldn’t actually fix The Exorcist but I didn’t think it’d make it worse.

I was wrong.

King Kong (1976, John Guillermin), the television version

You know, a three-hour King Kong movie may just be a bad idea. Though the television version of Kong is intended to be a two-night experience, turning the original two hour and fifteen minute movie into two two-hour network blocks. An almost mini-series event, only not because the only way to get it so long is to add in a lot of excess. There’s so much pointless footage. Some of it you can tell editor Ralph E. Winters cut intentionally because it’s redundant exposition, some of it is bad special effects, some of it is just more establishing shots.

There are a handful of fine additions. I can’t remember a single one, however, so not a full handful. Just little moments where it wasn’t a bad addition instead of being an obviously taped in piece messing up the flow of the editing. Like the new introduction to Jeff Bridges, which makes him more capable than Jessica Lange will give him credit for later on, at least as far as his ruthlessness. Arguably, it’s probably worse than anything bad guy Charles Grodin does (intentionally).

The worst addition are the extended Skull Island natives sequences. Unless you count the score, which doesn’t seem like the original John Barry score, rather some junior editor’s attempt to reuse the original John Barry score for another forty-five minutes or so. But it’s not just adding more music, it’s taking it away, so the television version actually breaks sequences. Often.

The stretched out Kong still spends most of its time on the island, but with a lot more material at the beginning. There’s a semi-good moment—when first mate stand-in Ed Lauter rolls his eyes at Grodin being extra and having to pretend it’s legit. Kong’s got a very interesting approach to camp; director Guillermin refuses to do it and the cast refuses to emote it, but the script’s still got it. The contrasts give the film a lot of personality (for a while).

But there’s also a lot more stuff with the natives preparing their sacrifice to Kong. There’s enough shots of the dancing natives, with a focus on the uncredited girl going to be sacrificed. See, you can’t stretch exceptionally problematic sequences too long because it just invites reflection; not only the characterization of the tribe, but the entire racist, colonizer nature of King Kong, which the film ends up playing with a tiny bit but also the logic to it. There’s absolutely no reason to think the fifty foot tall ape likes Jessica Lange more because she’s a blonde white lady and there’s also no reason to think he ate the regular native brides. It seems far more likely he takes them, plays with them like living dolls, then gets them killed through carelessness, month after month (timed to the full moon). You can even rationalize the natives’ elaborate dance sequence as amusing to Kong in the distant past so he wouldn’t eat the funny little hairless micro-apes.

There is so much empty time in Kong’s three hours. So much time to reflect.

Like how there’s an added scene with a couple guys perving on Lange onboard the ship—the only time she’s seriously objectified even though she dresses like it’s a skimpy casual photo shoot—and they end up dying first on the log sequence.

So are we supposed to feel a little less bad about them going?

The extra footage also implies more character development for the crew—namely Jack O’Halloran and Julius Harris—which doesn’t go anywhere but it’s an almost interesting idea, the perspectives of the crew on this wild goose chase.

Grodin gets another scene or two but ends up suffering the most in the extension. He’s barely in the second half of the film, which is really too bad since he’s initially the one who can sell the muted camp the best. He’s a profoundly good middle manager jackass.

The extra scenes literalize the ending with Lange and Bridges, which is too bad but I guess it’s cool to know it’s the film’s original intent. Also the more literalize, the more obvious Bridges is one weak dude. Despite his solid abs, which get at least one more scene this version, maybe two. He can’t cut it with Lange, who despite being initially characterized as ditzy is never ditzy once she gets going because her performance is too good. It’s even more clear with the excess footage—Guillermin just sets the camera on Lange and lets her vamp. It’s an incredibly bold, incredibly good, incredibly unappreciated move.

Kong’s all about the interiority of Lange’s experience. Well, when she’s in the movie. She also disappears in this version, thanks to more Kong in New York, which runs hot and cold, but then subzero when the finale—because TV version—cuts out most of the blood and gore in the showdown. Sadly the uncredited TV version editor doesn’t take advantage of the constraint to emphasis Lange and Bridges’s experience of it but what can you do.

Bridges is okay. The character doesn’t age well, what with him willing to ignore Kong in plight to finally score with Lange, even though their delayed romance seems entirely due to his classism and lack of confidence in her. There’s potential for a weird love quartet between Kong, Bridges, Lange, and Grodin, with only Grodin understanding Lange’s superego.

But it’s not in this television cut. It’s also not in the theatrical cut. But the theatrical cut doesn’t so definitely decide against it. The television cut adds a bunch of minutes, reduces a bunch of character and, consequently, performances. And the John Barry score. And it does a disservice to Ralph E. Winters’s editing.

And probably Richard H. Kline’s because it screws up the pace of the special effects accomplishments.

I’ve probably been wanting to see King Kong: the Television Version since my first Leonard Maltin movie guide, thirty plus years ago now; it’s all right. It could be worse. But it’s definitely not one of those cases of the expanded version bettering the film. Quite the opposite.

Though, for while he’s in the movie, Rene Auberjonois is a lot better with more to do, even when it’s mugging through transition montage material.

And Lange is excellent as ever.

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.

Fixed Bayonets! (1951, Samuel Fuller)

About two minutes after I had the thought, “Oh, no, what if the morale of Fixed Bayonets! is ‘it isn’t the generals who are the heroes but the men,’” the film reveals the morale to be it isn’t the generals who are the heroes but the men.

The film opens with a title card establishing the setting and the direct involvement of the U.S. Armed Forces. The first scene has two enlisted guys waxing poetic about how generals are super cool and they could never be generals because generals are super cool. Stuart Randall plays the general. He’s terrible. For his entire scene, it’s pins and needles whether the rest of the film is going to have such atrocious acting. And ham-fisted exposition. There’s going to be exposition later, but it thankfully won’t be ham-fisted. In fact, the opening scene is such an outlier to the rest of the film for a while in the second act it seems like Bayonets is going to end up a dark, satirical tragedy.

It has all the pieces. Leave out some of the patriotic music, get rid of the voices lead Richard Basehart hears (even the good ones), and without making any changes to the edit, Bayonets would be very different. The patriotic music and Basehart’s reassuring voices turn it into wartime propaganda. It assures the homefront the fellas are a-okay, even if it’s more a war than a “police action.” Heck, even the screwups get another chance over there. So it does end up being a tragedy, just not in a good way.

Because the second act of Fixed Bayonets! is phenomenal. Director Fuller is always ambitious with the action. The film mostly takes place at this pass Basehart and his platoon are defending; they’re the rear guard, trying to fake out the Chinese they’re actually the advance because everyone else has pulled back. There’s a big set of the pass, which lets Fuller and cinematographer Lucien Ballard do a bunch of great crane shots while things explode. It’s technically solid—particularly the photography—but it’s dramatically inert. Good pyrotechnics, but a string of booms, nothing else.

So when Fuller all of a sudden starts doing these amazing sequences in act two, after one of the squads has taken shelter in a very convenient cave, it’s a bit of a surprise. And then when it just keeps getting better and better, including the exterior sequences with the fighting and not just the pre and post-fighting scenes where the soldiers humanize… Fixed Bayonets gets really good, really fast, and for a significant portion of its runtime. If it weren’t for the finale, you could almost convince yourself the studio took the picture away from Fuller and tacked on the pro-Army intro. Especially since it would mean Fuller’s not responsible for Randall.

It also helps the acting is best in the second act. There’s no Randall, but there’s also a lot less Craig Hill. Hill’s the lieutenant. He’s not just bad, he’s annoying at it. Fuller gives him a bunch to do and Hill can’t do any of it. He’s mostly in the first act, immediately after Randall’s scene, so Bayonets isn’t off to a good start with its actors. Second act, focusing on Gene Evans’s squad in the cave, is when the acting gets better; the actors aren’t just better, they also have a lot better material from Fuller (who also scripted). Second act is when Fuller starts caring about the performances—and he cares a lot, but that first act is rough and not easily forgotten or forgiven. But they do it. Fuller, Evans, Basehart, Ballard, and especially editor Nick DeMaggio (after a routinely edited first act, Fuller goes on to almost entirely rely on it to create suspense and drama, something DeMaggio excels at executing). They get Bayonets to a great place and then the third act hits and it slides down into the muck. It’s not even jingoistic muck, it’s very specifically redemption through Armed Forces service muck. It doesn’t help Basehart’s performance goes to pot either. Evans tempers Basehart but when they need to do things separately, Basehart can’t hack it.

Some of it’s the part, some of it’s Fuller… actually, Basehart might be off the hook. There’s really no better way to play the recruitment ad portion of the film.

Evans is great. You know what, actually, no, Basehart’s not off the hook. He definitely should’ve incorporated some of sergeant Evans’s Obi-Waning.

But Evans is great.

Michael O’Shea’s decent as one of the other sergeants—uncredited Henry Kulky is hilarious as the third and final sergeant; otherwise the supporting cast is mostly indistinct. You can spot James Dean really easily if you keep your eye out.

The middle of Fixed Bayonets! is a beautifully made film, combining various techniques to slow down and inspect the emotions of its characters during moments of crisis and tension. There’s a very clear change in the film’s tone when it starts, very clear change when it stops. It’s not quite foreshadowing but it does involve the same character. It’s really unfortunate the third act is such a disaster. Even without the aspirational, jingoist finish, the action in the third act is mostly bad too. I guess it’d be worse if the first act were better, because then it’d seem like a nosedive instead of a return to original form.

But when Fuller excels, it’s something very special; thanks, obviously, in no small part to Evans, Ballard, and DeMaggio.

The Eagle and the Hawk (1933, Stuart Walker)

The Eagle and the Hawk starts light and ends very heavy. Astoundingly—and appropriately—heavy. Eagle is a WWI flying ace picture, all about a group of British fliers who go to France only to discover war isn’t like playing polo actually.

Right after an inventive segue from opening titles to the present action, the film has a very lumpy first act. Cary Grant has just landed he and Fredric March’s plane upside because he’s a bad pilot and then Jack Oakie comes along to make some jokes. Bogart Rogers and Seton I. Miller’s script is particularly rough in this section, ditto Walker’s direction. There’s also the problem Grant’s not very good and March’s character is real shallow. Oakie’s around with a shallower character, so it works out a little, but not well.

Soon enough, March and Oakie are in France—March having left Grant grounded in England—and they quickly find out people you meet die in war too, not just faceless Germans. Walker is bad at the first act comedy and noticeably better (if still not great) at the drama. A lot of the problem is the script, but then there’s also James Smith’s (uncredited) editing. Sure, Walker probably didn’t give Smith enough coverage–Eagle always feels frustratingly rushed and slightly on the cheap, particularly with the supporting cast—but there are some profoundly bad cuts in the film. It gets to the point you have to predict the jump cuts so you can follow where the actors have moved while still in the middle of the same continuous scene.

March goes through numerous observers—which ought to be a great montage sequence but Walker screws it up in an obvious way (the film ends up implying only March ever loses any observers in combat and yet gets all the medals for them dying)—until there’s no one left in France so they bring in Grant. They’ve got some unresolved hostility to work through, in addition to Grant being a sociopathic bully, but eventually March’s functional alcoholism starts getting dysfunctional and commanding officer Guy Standing has to do something about it.

That something ends up involving a Carole Lombard cameo—the public’s got to have a pretty face—and she’s great but it’s complete filler. Though it does give March another good couple scenes, including meeting bloodthirsty little ghoul kid Douglas Scott and his mother, Virginia Hammond, seemingly realizing toxic masculinity is probably bad.

At its best, Eagle and the Hawk gives March the material he needs to give an exquisite performance. It’s never quite up to snuff—the final monologue needs to be better, even if March knocks it out of the park—thanks to the script and the direction. Walker (or possibly “associate” director Mitchell Leisen) have some occasional great instincts and the sound design is always right and Harry Fischbeck comes through on the photography when tasked… but there’s only so high Eagle can fly with its various albatrosses.

Grant in particular doesn’t help. Even as he improves throughout, it’s a combination of his acting being a tad too inconsistent and Walker not knowing how to direct the film.

And Standing needs to be better if he’s going to be so earnest in his indifference to the loss of human life.

Oh, and Kenneth Howell. Howell’s the new kid whose supposed to be angelic and it’s a fail for multiple reasons, including Howell not being very good. Again, Walker’s no doubt responsible for a lot of it.

But March is good enough alone he almost makes Eagle and the Hawk worth it.

Flora & Ulysses (2021, Lena Khan)

Flora & Ulysses is a perfectly functional multi-quadrant family movie. Khan’s direction is good—sometimes really good—and kid lead Matilda Lawler is good so, you know, it’s fine. I mean, it’d be better if Lawler actually got to be the lead in the movie instead of it splitting between her separated parents, blocked romance novelist Alyson Hannigan and flailing comic book creator Ben Schwartz.

Hannigan’s not good. Schwartz is fine. He’s a little helpless for a grown man, though the film’s take is parents are both equally just kind of not great; it’s unclear why they’re separated. Something about Schwartz’s comic book failing (probably because the art’s not great).

The art not being great is weird because Flora & Ulysses leverages all the Disney cousins—lots and lots of Marvel superheroes. Mentioned in conversation so much Kevin Smith would think it was a little much. They do still have some DC comics in Lawler’s stacks of bagged and boarded floppies (Lawler being a cool comics kid is pretty much only a subplot for the first act, which is a bummer) and there’s a big Man of Steel style riff at the end. But it’s a lot of Marvel Comics references, starting with the opening narration and montage sequence comparing Schwartz’s Silver Age-y unsold superhero to Fantastic Four and Wolverine and Silver Surfer.

So not just Marvel properties, but the new ones.

Oh, yeah, also did you know Titanic is Disney now? Flora & Ulysses does. And there’s a few obvious Star Wars nods for the dads.

Anyway. It’s fine. The third act saves things.

I haven’t gotten around to talking about the Ulysses in the title, a CGI super-squirrel who Lawler saves, befriends, and starts to train to become a hero. It’s supposedly a boy squirrel but if you know squirrels… it’s pretty clear it’s not a boy squirrel. The CGI is so good, it’s kind of disconcerting, like I kept expecting part of the movie to be Lawler pretending it’s a super, soulful, literal poet squirrel. But, no, I was projecting because it looks so real and there’s no emphasizing of the special effects feat it just seems like it eventually has to be a fantasy.

Nope, just a twenty-first century kids movie. Schwartz and Hannigan are a whole lot less realistic than the squirrel—also a bunch of the super-powered squirrel stuff is just a squirrel being a squirrel, which is amazing.

While Khan’s great directing the kids—Lawler especially, but also her new pal Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who’s in town from the UK for the summer because he’s suffering hysterical blindness, which leads to some really bad jokes but also the summer thing doesn’t matter (Brad Copeland’s script is wanting)—she doesn’t do anywhere near as well with the adults. Schwartz’s blandly appealing unless you think too hard about how bad he is at adulting, Hannigan gets worse the more she has to do, and Danny Pudi is rather disappointing as the local animal control guy after the squirrel. He’s got a couple moments, but only a couple.

Anna Deavere Smith is the magical psychiatrist widow who lives in Schwartz’s complex and offers him the grown up advice he can’t figure out on his own. Smartphones don’t exist in Flora & Ulysses, so I guess he couldn’t just Google. Though, again, it’s entirely unclear why the parents are broken up other than to give it a power of family theme.

Because it’s never about Flora Lawler or CGI Ulysses, who’s awesome, adorable, and always a special effect and never a character, and it’s definitely not about Flora & Ulysses.

But, you know, it’s fine. It’s a kids’ movie. What do you want.

The Monuments Men (2014, George Clooney)

The Monuments Men is cute. It probably shouldn’t be cute, or if it should be cute, it should somehow be more cute. But it’s fairly fubar. The film’s got very little dramatic momentum since it can never find a tone and also because its scenes try to skip over the drama or do whatever it can to avoid it. It’s competent. It’s occasionally well-acted. Some aspects of the writing are okay though maybe not. It’s not an incompetent script when it comes to the scenes, the film’s just edited in such a way any scene with attempts at character development completely flop because no one has a character.

The film is about the Allied efforts to recover fine art after the Germans stole it during World War II. George Clooney—in addition to directing, co-producing, and co-adapting—is the ostensible lead. He’s the one who presents the idea at the beginning, then he ceases to have any dramatic relevance. But basically he puts a team together and they try to save Art History 101 from Hitler.

The team is a reasonably eclectic bunch of recognizable actors, including Matt Damon to ensure some box office, Bill Murray because Clooney (very wrongly) thinks Murray can make something out of a nothing role, John Goodman, Bob Babalan, Jean Dujardin as the French guy, and Hugh Bonneville as the British guy.

Performance wise… Bonneville’s the easy winner, then probably Cate Blanchett as Damon’s contact in Belgium, then Damon, then Dujardin, then… Goodman? Murray and Babalan are supposed to be beginning an unlikely but beautiful friendship and have zero chemistry together. Like, there are some okay sight gags with Babalan but… they’re sight gags. They’re way too easy and Babalan is clearly not trying. Murray seems actively bored (it’s kind of hard to blame him) but Babalan’s a close second for disinterest.

Everyone else tries. Though Clooney’s phoning it in, which is a big problem since he’s occasionally narrating and gets some monologues you’d think he’d want to do at least another take on, both as an actor and the director.

Dimitri Leonidas plays their translator. He’s good.

The film pairs off most of the cast—Damon and Blanchett, Goodman and Dujardin, Murray and Babalan—for a bunch of adventures, sometimes involving recovering the art, sometimes bad, lengthy jokes, sometimes danger.

But it’s all kind of trite, something Alexandre Desplat’s score annoyingly reminds every few seconds. With some exception, the entire cast is interchangeable. Their specific art history jobs don’t even matter.

And while it’s obviously based on true events… only one of the characters hasn’t had his name changed so it’s not based on true events enough anyone would want to be accountable for historical accuracy so Clooney and co-writer, co-producer, and cameo co-star Grant Heslov really should’ve found some drama in the film.

Though Clooney’s missing a lot. Like any sense of scale. In addition to being incapable of directing the ensemble cast.

Monuments Men seems like a project where everyone decided it was “good enough” at some point without ever finding “good.” The plotting—you can’t even say the script because it’s hard to believe cause and effect escaped Clooney and Heslov so something must’ve gone wrong later—but the plotting is meandering, pedestrian, and amateurish.

A good score could’ve probably held it together, but Desplat’s score is not good at all and it works against the film.

If it weren’t for Clooney being such a multi-hyphenate on the project, you’d think he was forced to do it under contract.

And that end cameo is a big fail. It’s “cute” but pointless and ineffective. Just like the movie.

Trafic (1971, Jacques Tati)

For the first hour, Trafic has a lot of gems. The film opens with a car manufacturing plant with a lot of nice, precise composition and editing, and director Tati maintains an interest in the goings-on of cars and their drivers. The action centers around an auto show in Amsterdam (presumably filmed at a real auto show for some of it) and there are a handful of wonderful montage sequences showing off the latest and greatest in technology. But more the old standards—how’s the trunk work, how’s the door work, how’s the hood work—with Tati going a little absurd but never completely there. Usually because they cut away not because the scene couldn’t go totally absurd, it’s just not there long enough.

During that first hour, there are these various gag setups without any follow through; instead Tati finds something else in the action, like how people yawn when driving or, you know, pick their noses. A lot. The nose picking montage would break a lesser film but Trafic can manage it just fine. In fact, when the subsequent montages break out amongst the random drivers driving unobserved… nothing can quite beat the nose picking. Though they never really try as hard again either.

Tati plays a car designer whose company is sending him to the auto show to help exhibit their camping car. It’s a station wagon with a camper built into the back of it and there are all sorts of gadgets. The film takes a long time to get around to introducing the gadgets, but once it does, they’re amusing and all a little silly. But their reveal comes after the first hour, when Trafic is starting to sputter about aimlessly. When it does find the plot again, it’s an entirely unpredictable one, which would be fine if it were good but instead the last thirty plus minutes of the film embraces all its weakest elements.

First and foremost is Maria Kimberly. She’s playing the public relations person in charge of presenting the car. She’s always changing her clothes—in her adorable little car—and it’s immediately a tired gimmick because Kimberly’s obnoxious. It’s not her fault she’s obnoxious, the character’s obnoxious, but she’s profoundly unpleasant to be around. All she does is whine, under-act, change her clothes, have guys ogle her. She’s got this dog with her the whole movie, occasionally getting into antics, and it takes an hour for it to be believable she’s the dog’s person she’s so indifferent to it.

Kimberly, Tati, and Marcel Fraval are in charge of getting the model camping car to the auto show. Except the car company’s truck is a junker and it starts breaking down immediately, leading to multiple mechanic stops. At one point Tati could juxtapose incapable, glamorous Kimberly—who the film establishes in her first scene as an inept jerk—with a female mechanic who has to do all the work while her dad sits and watches the Apollo 11 mission on TV, but the female mechanic doesn’t even get a credit. She also doesn’t get anything to do. While the film holds together for an hour, Tati seems done trying to do any juxtaposing—flashy new auto show cars against cars in junk yards—around thirty minutes in. Trafic is frustrating because you can see it starting to go downhill. It’s very clearly happening and for a while it seems like Tati’s got to have it under control because he’s so unconcerned.

And then it crashes and never recovers. Worse, there’s a crash and a recovery in the narrative, so the whole thing becomes a self-analogy.

In the end, Trafic doesn’t work out. It’s got a solid enough first hour—a little soft near the end but certainly recoverable—then the rest is one miss or another. Except this utterly sublime moment where one of the subplots pays off unexpectedly and brilliantly and magically and then Kimberly ruins it.

But by that point, the only thing more surprising than Kimberly messing it up would be Tati trying to patch Trafic after her latest puncture.