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Saturday, August 3, 2024

What I've Caught Up With, July 2024 Part 1

I watched about three dozen movies in July, which catches me up a little. I’m still a dozen or more off the pace of the goal of 400 for the year. There were some solid watches this month, and some weird coincidences, as there always are. More coming tomorrow

What I’ve Caught Up With, July 2024 Part 1:
Film: Compulsion (1959)

The most famous cinematic exploration in the Leopold and Loeb murders is Rope. While not nearly as famous, Compulsion attempts to be a more complete and accurate version of the story. Two graduate students, Artie Strauss (Bradford Dillman) and Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) are firm in their beliefs of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and want to prove their superiority by pulling off the perfect crime—a murder of a neighborhood child, who they then try to ransom after the killing. Things get complicated when a number of things go wrong. It’s an interesting cast, including Orson Welles as Strauss and Steiner’s attorney, Martin Milner as a fellow grad student who works as a reporter on the case, and Gavin MacLeod as the D.A.’s assistant. Rope is the better movie, but this is solid.

Film: The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)

If you’re my age, at some point in your early teens or just before, you encountered punk music, and that was an epiphany in one direction or another. Hearing The Clash for the first time was one of those moments for me. I’m old enough to remember when Elvis Costello was considered punk. Anyway, The Decline of Western Civilization is about the punk movement. Featured bands include the Germs, pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag, Fear, the Circle Jerks, and X. If you’re not a fan of angry, violent music, you’re not going to have a lot here that you want to see, but if you are, this is the kind of footage you’ve been looking for, but I’d really like to have more behind-the-scenes stuff. The music is fun, but a steady diet of it is hard to deal with.

Film: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

The Doolittle Raid over Tokyo was a much-needed morale boost for the States, so it’s not really a surprise that a propaganda film about the raid was made while the war was still ongoing. While Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is clearly a war picture, there’s not a great deal of actual war in it. A number of bomber crews train to take off from carriers so that they can bomb cities in Japan. We don’t get to the actual raid for more than the first half of the film, and once that’s over, we deal with downed crews avoiding capture for about 45 minutes. This is big on romance, light on fighting, but it was probably what America needed at the time. It’s a dandy cast, focused mainly on Van Johnson, but with a good role for Robert Mitchum and featuring Spencer Tracy as Doolittle.

Film: JCVD (2008)

It's always a bit of a crapshoot when actors are cast playing themselves in a film. Often, you get intentional parody. Rarely, you get JCVD, a film where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a burnt-out, strung-out version of himself who gets caught up in an attempted robbery of a post office. While not parody, this does put a spotlight on Van Damme, blurring the lines between the film plot and the reality of his life, an aspect that culminates in a long single-take soliloquy about his own wasted life. It’s a hell of a concept and a hell of an idea. If you think Van Damme is a talentless action star, JCVD has a little something to say about that.

Film: Wonka (2023)

I honestly didn’t love Wonka, and I kind of didn’t really expect to. This is exactly the sort of film that fueled my “I don’t like musicals” opinion when I started this blog years ago. Any movie where the plot can be solved with a song, gumption, and a little bit of magic and optimism is one that I’m going to reject like a bad organ transplant. That said, Wonka might well be the perfect metaphor for late-stage capitalism. Young Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) goes to make his fortune and is trodden down by his competitors and only overcomes this with the use of literal magic, and even then, it’s a close thing. The cast is admittedly very good and very deep, but the plot is literally that the bad guys are only beaten in extreme cases and with extreme measures. Also, like most things that feature Sally Hawkins, there’s not enough Sally Hawkins.

Film: Mata Hari (1931)

The most celebrated spy in the world is James Bond, but in terms of real people, it’s absolutely Mata Hari. At the very least, she is the most notorious, probably in large part because she spied for Germany in World War I. The film Mata Hari, made in 1931, less than a generation after she was executed for espionage, attempts at least in part to reform her reputation by making her a tragic, romantic figure. Oh, Mata Hari (Greta Garbo) is still a spy and still working for Kaiser Bill, but in this film she falls madly in love with a Russian pilot named Alexis Rosanoff (Ramon Novarro), and she is torn about stealing intel from him. It gets a bit sappy at the end, but Garbo is good as always, and Lionel Barrymore is always a welcome sight.

Film: Mid90s (2018)

A coming-of-age movie for boys that doesn’t involve death, Mid90s tells the story of Stevie (Sunny Suljic), a 13-year-old boy looking for a place to belong in his rough LA neighborhood. He ends up running with a group of skateboarders who are a little older than he is and a little wilder than he is. Stevie is rebelling from something—his mother, his older brother, everything around him, and while skating might be an outlet, his skating friends might also be leading him down a dangerous path. This is surprisingly good. It also happens to be the directorial debut of Jonah Hill, and I would guess that there’s at least a little bit here that is autobiographical.

4 comments:

  1. I've only seen The Decline of Western Civilization which I think is a great movie although I'm not sure which film of the trilogy is considered the best.

    mid90s is a film I really want to see as I have a digital copy of the score by NIN. JCVD is a film I've only seen bits of but Van Damme is great in this as he seems to have already made some good choices late into his career while also doing things where he doesn't take himself too seriously like that fat pussy bitch Steven Seagal.

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    1. I was surprised by JCVD. I'd heard good about it, but it was better than I expected.

      I'm with you on the Decline films. I should probably watch the others when I get a chance.

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  2. I’m not the biggest fan of Rope. It is an interesting picture but not up in Hitch’s top tier. Compulsion is more traditionally produced but I found it compelling. Dillman & Stockwell give solid, at times unnerving, performances but it’s Welles who is the standout.

    Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo benefits from the MGM gloss and deep well of talent and I found it involving when I watched it, but it is not one I return to often. It is not distinctive enough to stand out from the dozens of other war films that came out at the time. When I first saw the title, I confused it with the Cary Grant/John Garfield starrer Destination Tokyo!

    Mata Hari might make concessions from the reality of who the real woman was to befit Garbo’s image, but she is perfect casting for the role. The film also has a great look along with amazing costume design.

    I wasn’t really the target audience for Decline of Western Civilization. There are a few songs I don’t mind but hard-core punk leaves me cold. Because of that it was more an intriguing look at the forces and culture shifts that brought it to prominence than much entertainment value for me.

    I’m not a big enough fan of Jean Claude Van Damme to track down JCVD but if I ran across it someday, I might give it a look.

    I’ve been on the fence about Wonka. I cannot imagine anyone improving on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Gene Wilder’s perfect performance, but the few clips I’ve seen made the film look colorful and fun. From your description it does sound like a bit of a throwback to a certain type of puffy musical from the Golden Age. I know you are not a fan but if I’m in the right mood I don’t mind them.

    Mid90’s is one I don’t know.

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    1. I like Rope because of its technical mastery, and the inherent tension of the story, but I don't disagree with your point here.

      Mata Hari is all about Garbo, and that's fine. It really should be all about here. I'm also of the same opinion as you on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. It's an odd war film in that so much of it isn't really that war film-y.

      You'll likely enjoy Wonka more than I did if you are in the right frame of mind. You'll also likely not enjoy Decline as much as I did.

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