Recent Viewings, Part 2

[indianasmith]

SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)  Ben and Louise Dalton and their daughter Agnes, an American expatriate couple living in London while he looks for a new job, encounter a charming English doctor named Paddy and his wife Ciara and their speech-impaired son Ant during a vacation in Italy.  The doctor (played by James MacAvoy) invites them to visit his home in the north country.  A few weeks later, Ben's latest job interview ended in him not being offered the position, so he decides maybe a few days away from the city would do them some good.
   The farm is beautiful and their hosts extremely friendly, but things quickly take a dark turn and Paddy and Ciara alternate between being charming and gracious and increasingly creepy.  And Ant's seems to be warning them to beware of something, but his inability to speak makes it difficult for them to heed the warning until it is too late, and the sinister purpose of the invitation becomes all too plain. . .

This is a VERY creepy horror film, and MacAvoy is BRILLIANT in his performance as a charming, deadly killer.  Highly recommended!  5/5

[Rev. Powell]

PSYCHOSIS (2023): A criminal "fixer" who hears voices (but is not otherwise schizophrenic) reluctantly takes a case involving drug dealers, zombies, and a criminal with a connection to his own past, who's a master hypnotist. This experimental (black and white, with the narrowest aspect ratio I've seen in a feature) film plays out as an actioner that adheres to its own bizarre logic rather than an "is he hallucinating?" psychological thriller, which is a welcome approach. 3/5.

[Trevor]

SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)  Ben and Louise Dalton and their daughter Agnes, an American expatriate couple living in London while he looks for a new job, encounter a charming English doctor named Paddy and his wife Ciara and their speech-impaired son Ant during a vacation in Italy.  The doctor (played by James MacAvoy) invites them to visit his home in the north country.  A few weeks later, Ben's latest job interview ended in him not being offered the position, so he decides maybe a few days away from the city would do them some good.
   The farm is beautiful and their hosts extremely friendly, but things quickly take a dark turn and Paddy and Ciara alternate between being charming and gracious and increasingly creepy.  And Ant's seems to be warning them to beware of something, but his inability to speak makes it difficult for them to heed the warning until it is too late, and the sinister purpose of the invitation becomes all too plain. . .

This is a VERY creepy horror film, and MacAvoy is BRILLIANT in his performance as a charming, deadly killer.  Highly recommended!  5/5

It's apparently a remake of the 2022 Danish film.

[Rev. Powell]

SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)  Ben and Louise Dalton and their daughter Agnes, an American expatriate couple living in London while he looks for a new job, encounter a charming English doctor named Paddy and his wife Ciara and their speech-impaired son Ant during a vacation in Italy.  The doctor (played by James MacAvoy) invites them to visit his home in the north country.  A few weeks later, Ben's latest job interview ended in him not being offered the position, so he decides maybe a few days away from the city would do them some good.
   The farm is beautiful and their hosts extremely friendly, but things quickly take a dark turn and Paddy and Ciara alternate between being charming and gracious and increasingly creepy.  And Ant's seems to be warning them to beware of something, but his inability to speak makes it difficult for them to heed the warning until it is too late, and the sinister purpose of the invitation becomes all too plain. . .

This is a VERY creepy horror film, and MacAvoy is BRILLIANT in his performance as a charming, deadly killer.  Highly recommended!  5/5

It's apparently a remake of the 2022 Danish film.

Yes, it's a remake. The Danish film sounded interesting when I read about it. Apparently the Danish version is more satirical with social commentary and an ending that is much more violent and nihilistic. This American one did not look particularly interesting when I saw the trailer, but reviews were good so I dived in.

McAvoy indeed makes a great villain and the suspense is great, even though you guess the basics of the situation early on. It plays on our inherent politeness and basic trust for other people, suggesting how easy it is for an unscrupulous character to play on social conventions while hiding evil intentions. Even though the good couple senses something is wrong, almost everything can be explained away as a misunderstanding, and they don't want to be impolite and give unnecessary offense! As a thriller, it gets the job done professionally, though it leaves you little to chew on afterwards. 3.5/5, but I am a much tougher grader than Indy. 

[indianasmith]

SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)  Ben and Louise Dalton and their daughter Agnes, an American expatriate couple living in London while he looks for a new job, encounter a charming English doctor named Paddy and his wife Ciara and their speech-impaired son Ant during a vacation in Italy.  The doctor (played by James MacAvoy) invites them to visit his home in the north country.  A few weeks later, Ben's latest job interview ended in him not being offered the position, so he decides maybe a few days away from the city would do them some good.
   The farm is beautiful and their hosts extremely friendly, but things quickly take a dark turn and Paddy and Ciara alternate between being charming and gracious and increasingly creepy.  And Ant's seems to be warning them to beware of something, but his inability to speak makes it difficult for them to heed the warning until it is too late, and the sinister purpose of the invitation becomes all too plain. . .

This is a VERY creepy horror film, and MacAvoy is BRILLIANT in his performance as a charming, deadly killer.  Highly recommended!  5/5

It's apparently a remake of the 2022 Danish film.

Yes, it's a remake. The Danish film sounded interesting when I read about it. Apparently the Danish version is more satirical with social commentary and an ending that is much more violent and nihilistic. This American one did not look particularly interesting when I saw the trailer, but reviews were good so I dived in.

McAvoy indeed makes a great villain and the suspense is great, even though you guess the basics of the situation early on. It plays on our inherent politeness and basic trust for other people, suggesting how easy it is for an unscrupulous character to play on social conventions while hiding evil intentions. Even though the good couple senses something is wrong, almost everything can be explained away as a misunderstanding, and they don't want to be impolite and give unnecessary offense! As a thriller, it gets the job done professionally, though it leaves you little to chew on afterwards. 3.5/5, but I am a much tougher grader than Indy. 

Pretty much everybody is, Rev!  LOL

[lester1/2jr]

The Dissident (2020)- 2 hour long documentary about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It's very focused on just the killing and the context in which it happened. Long story short: he had first been a supporter of the Saudi government, then gradually became more and more critical of them. At some point, he decided it was for the best to leave the country and come here, where he continued his campaign to bring freedom of expression to Saudi Arabia. As we all know, he one day entered the Saudi embassy in Turkey and was never heard from again.

The villain here is Mohammad Bin Salman, who wanted to have his cake and eat it too: get praise for superficial "progress" while arresting people who disagree with him. I used to follow an African Al Jezeera journalist on twitter who offered the only reason I've ever heard as to how MBS thought he would get away with such a massive, traceable assassination: Basically, he had fired and imprisoned a lot of the previous hierarchy which, considering they were terrorist support Wahabis, was probably a good idea. Those guys also knew how the world worked though, and there was no one left with any experience in international affairs who could have told him "Hey, this isn't going to be confined to Saudi Arabia. People elsewhere are going to notice".

The hero is modern technology. Everything that happened to Khashoggi was picked up by cameras and whatnot in Turkey. Also, other dissidents around the world can now go on youtube and other sort of formats and continue his cause. Like China though, Saudi Arabia is awash in absurd amounts of money which allow them to do everything they can to maintain their power and vision for society.

Some minor villains are Donald Trump, who can't accept that the jig is up and insists on spewing "we don't really know" stuff about the most blatant, done in full view political assassination ever and also Israel, who provide MBS with up to date versions of it's infamous Pegasus software, which allows governments to hack into anyone's phone. Love or hate Trump/ Israel these were not helpful actions.

5/5

[M.10rda]

Love or hate Israel these were not helpful actions

...ought to be the epitaph on the tombstone of Bibi Netanyahu's political career.

Good review, L1/2!

[M.10rda]

THE SAVAGE EYE (1960):
This oddity is some kind of American precursor to the Mondo canon crossed w/ a freeform beat art flick. It's credited to three Anglo-sounding directors - none of whom, therefore, seem to be either Jacopetti or Prosperi - and iirc it began life as a documentary before being abandoned and then repurposed as a cheapie narrative melodrama. Whoever was the last director to touch this shot a lot of additional footage of one actress and then shoe-horned her close-ups and her voice-overs into the found footage. It almost works and it's almost interesting enough to watch once, maybe.

The 30something dame gets off an airplane, rides a bus, rents an apartment, and wanders through life in a surly and depressed daze. She maintains a running (sometimes relentless!) repartee w/ an unseen man who initially claims to be either God or her conscience and grills her mercilessly. The lady's divorced but still misses her cheating heel of a husband and has a big hate-on for mankind in general. Naturally she visits department stores, boxing matches, cosmetology salons, faith healing revivals, burlesque shows, drag clubs, and what I think is the same pet cemetery MONDO CANE would visit a couple years later, just to sneer at the foolish humans wasting their time doing foolish human stuff. Some of the dialogue is clever but most of it's entirely too arch and tiresome in its endless condescension.

But! Something interesting does happen in the last ten minutes or so of THE SAVAGE EYE, and it's something that happens in most Great fiction tales but doesn't often happen in docs. There's a turning point, a twist of sorts, and the main character changes. For a few moments the film becomes mildly non-realist, and I thought I knew where things were going - but they go somewhere else instead. The final scene and the last handful of shots are rather... lovely, even idyllic. I rewound and watched that final moment again. Maybe I misjudged THE SAVAGE EYE and should have watched the entire film w/ more care. Alternately, maybe the presiding director just figured out an ideal way to wrap up a big old mess of short ends. Tbh I won't watch it again to evaluate any time soon.

3/5 A curio, though.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Ready Or Not" (2017)
On the night of her wedding into an uber-wealthy family, a bride (Samara Weaving) finds herself on the run from her new in-laws, who are suddenly trying to kill her in order to fulfill a family prophecy. A sharp, black-as-coal ultra-violent horror comedy that finds just the right balance between laughs and carnage. Sick, twisted, and lots of fun!

[M.10rda]

^^^ READY OR NOT was great.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970):
You could FF through the first 25 minutes of this one and as long as you have any awareness of who Holmes and Dr. Watson are you'll miss nothing. The opening is so slow, flat, and uninvolving that I wondered if the "Directed by Billy Wilder" credit was a typo by the lab or something. At the 25 minute point, however, we finally get an original and interesting scene: Holmes and Watson come home late from a raucous party at a ballet and Watson is suddenly struck with a revelation... in essence: Holmes, what if everyone thinks we're gay? Watson laughs it off, as his own reputation as a poonhound is well-establioshed... but Holmes, who no one has ever seen with a woman, seems legitimately unnerved.

Ahh! Now here, thought I, is a novel take on stale material: the closeted Sherlock Holmes! To Wilder's credit, that appears to be exactly what he intended to explore in this film. Unfortunately, both the studio and the Doyle estate objected, so in the very next scene a lovely foreign (apparent) amnesiac is delivered to 221B Baker Street and Holmes spends the rest of the movie acting coldly to her, telling her he mistrusts her (which SPOILERS of course he should), working overtime to get rid of her, and then, at the film's end, more or less revealing his deep romantic love for her. That last part, oy.

That said, the mystery that surrounds the femme amnesiac does work nicely for another 101 minutes, with interesting investigative digressions, intrigue, a rather progressive military-industrial/workers' rights angle to the proceedings, some nice-looking Scottish locations, a pivotal supporting role played by the Loch Ness Monster, and a very pivotal supporting role played by the superb Christopher Lee as Sherlock's older brother Mycroft, who (culture nerds will recognize) is more or less canonically acknowledged as being the original "M", later to lord over the James Bond series. Aside from playing Scaramanga in TMWTGG, Lee was Ian Fleming's cousin and close friend, and also a military officer before entering the movie biz. Apparently it's long been suggested that Fleming picked up some story ideas from Lee, and Lee never refuted that suggestion when it was posed to him. He's obviously having a grand time playing M(ycroft) here and even shaves off most of his hair to look like a stiff-upper lipped cueball. 

Oh yeah, the rest of the movie! Wilder stages a lot of it in mostly static wide shots. That's torture early on, but once the plot kicks in it's easier to discern that Wilder is employing old fashioned formalism as a straw man. The moments where he abruptly uses close-ups or moves the camera to reveal something surprising are very effective, and there is ONE scene in a dark bedroom that is so stylishly and thoughtfully shot that it could be the work of David Lynch.

Originally released theatrically at 114 minutes, 12 more minutes were added for the DVD cut I watched, about half of those into that long pointless opening stretch. Apparently Wilder shot even a lot more - like, two and a half more cases worth of footage - but all of it has been lost, reportedly. It's hard not to wonder whether the other stuff would've been genius (as some of this film certainly is) or badly misconceived (likewise) but I do have a soft spot in my heart for forgotten cinematic black sheep like this one.

3.5/5

Holmes is played by acclaimed British stage actor Robert Stephens, who has zero chemistry w/ the young French actress who plays his supposed love interest. I've seen little of Stephens' film work (he didn't do a ton) but he was married, originally to Dame Maggie Smith (who I can't imagine him having any additional chemistry with) and then at the end of his life to Patricia Quinn, who could have searing, scalding chemistry with a paper cup or a wooden chair or a leaf. I wonder if Quinn (one of my all-time screen crushes) had the kind of marriage w/ Stephens that Elsa Lanchester (one of my others) had with Charles Laughton; and I wonder if Stephens would've been perfectly cast for whatever Wilder's original concept for this flick had been.

[Rev. Powell]

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022): After the destruction of his applejack distillery (by beavers), Jean Kayak takes up fur trapping, falls in love with a trader's daughter, and discovers he will have to supply pelts of 100s of beavers to win her hand. Nearly silent, black and white, it's a never-ending series of slapstick gags influenced by Buster Keaton, Guy Maddin, and video games, but more than anything, by classic Looney Toons: Kayak even builds a female bunny (complete with snowball boobs) to try to ensnare male rabbits. Took me way too long to officially join the beaver lodge, but I'm glad I finally did! 4.5/5. Highly recommended.

[Rev. Powell]

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022): After the destruction of his applejack distillery (by beavers), Jean Kayak takes up fur trapping, falls in love with a trader's daughter, and discovers he will have to supply pelts of 100s of beavers to win her hand. Nearly silent, black and white, it's a never-ending series of snowy slapstick gags influenced by Buster Keaton, Guy Maddin, and video games, but more than anything, by classic Looney Toons: Kayak even builds a female bunny (complete with snowball boobs) to try to ensnare male rabbits. Took me way too long to officially join the beaver lodge, but I'm glad I finally did! 4.5/5. Highly recommended.

[Trevor]

I see you liked it so much Rev that you posted about it twice 😊🐢

[Trevor]

^^^ READY OR NOT was great.

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1970):
You could FF through the first 25 minutes of this one and as long as you have any awareness of who Holmes and Dr. Watson are you'll miss nothing. The opening is so slow, flat, and uninvolving that I wondered if the "Directed by Billy Wilder" credit was a typo by the lab or something. At the 25 minute point, however, we finally get an original and interesting scene: Holmes and Watson come home late from a raucous party at a ballet and Watson is suddenly struck with a revelation... in essence: Holmes, what if everyone thinks we're gay? Watson laughs it off, as his own reputation as a poonhound is well-establioshed... but Holmes, who no one has ever seen with a woman, seems legitimately unnerved.

Ahh! Now here, thought I, is a novel take on stale material: the closeted Sherlock Holmes! To Wilder's credit, that appears to be exactly what he intended to explore in this film. Unfortunately, both the studio and the Doyle estate objected, so in the very next scene a lovely foreign (apparent) amnesiac is delivered to 221B Baker Street and Holmes spends the rest of the movie acting coldly to her, telling her he mistrusts her (which SPOILERS of course he should), working overtime to get rid of her, and then, at the film's end, more or less revealing his deep romantic love for her. That last part, oy.

That said, the mystery that surrounds the femme amnesiac does work nicely for another 101 minutes, with interesting investigative digressions, intrigue, a rather progressive military-industrial/workers' rights angle to the proceedings, some nice-looking Scottish locations, a pivotal supporting role played by the Loch Ness Monster, and a very pivotal supporting role played by the superb Christopher Lee as Sherlock's older brother Mycroft, who (culture nerds will recognize) is more or less canonically acknowledged as being the original "M", later to lord over the James Bond series. Aside from playing Scaramanga in TMWTGG, Lee was Ian Fleming's cousin and close friend, and also a military officer before entering the movie biz. Apparently it's long been suggested that Fleming picked up some story ideas from Lee, and Lee never refuted that suggestion when it was posed to him. He's obviously having a grand time playing M(ycroft) here and even shaves off most of his hair to look like a stiff-upper lipped cueball. 

Oh yeah, the rest of the movie! Wilder stages a lot of it in mostly static wide shots. That's torture early on, but once the plot kicks in it's easier to discern that Wilder is employing old fashioned formalism as a straw man. The moments where he abruptly uses close-ups or moves the camera to reveal something surprising are very effective, and there is ONE scene in a dark bedroom that is so stylishly and thoughtfully shot that it could be the work of David Lynch.

Originally released theatrically at 114 minutes, 12 more minutes were added for the DVD cut I watched, about half of those into that long pointless opening stretch. Apparently Wilder shot even a lot more - like, two and a half more cases worth of footage - but all of it has been lost, reportedly. It's hard not to wonder whether the other stuff would've been genius (as some of this film certainly is) or badly misconceived (likewise) but I do have a soft spot in my heart for forgotten cinematic black sheep like this one.

3.5/5

Holmes is played by acclaimed British stage actor Robert Stephens, who has zero chemistry w/ the young French actress who plays his supposed love interest. I've seen little of Stephens' film work (he didn't do a ton) but he was married, originally to Dame Maggie Smith (who I can't imagine him having any additional chemistry with) and then at the end of his life to Patricia Quinn, who could have searing, scalding chemistry with a paper cup or a wooden chair or a leaf. I wonder if Quinn (one of my all-time screen crushes) had the kind of marriage w/ Stephens that Elsa Lanchester (one of my others) had with Charles Laughton; and I wonder if Stephens would've been perfectly cast for whatever Wilder's original concept for this flick had been.

I really think Billy Wilder was out of his depth making this. The other thing out of depth was the Loch Ness Monster which sank and was only recovered years later.

[Rev. Powell]

I see you liked it so much Rev that you posted about it twice 😊🐢

Yes, I posted about it before I fully saw it.