It’s the holiday season, so I watched a dozen movies last week:
- It seems strange to call They’re a Weird Mob my “white whale,” if only because it’s not at all well known, or—jumping forward—even particularly good. But several years back, I decided to watch all of the Powell and Pressburger movies, and this, their penultimate collaboration and the last one I hadn’t seen, proved incredibly difficult to find. Having finally seen the film now, of course, that’s hardly surprising. Walter Chiari is a charming enough lead, but the film has only one joke: ain’t it funny when foreigners try to understand Australians? It’s easy to see why the film never really played outside of that country, or why it’s become an elusive footnote to Powell and Pressburger’s joint careers.
- There’s a certain lo-fi whimsy, somewhat akin to early 2000s Michael Gondry, in Strawberry Mansion, and there’s a wit and warmth to its unreality that mostly makes that work.
- Chandler isn’t exactly a lost neo-noir classic, and it’s often more than a little slow. But the movie has some very nice moments, and Warren Oates is good in the hardboiled, downtrodden lead role.
- I like that The Creator exists a lot more than I like the movie itself. Maybe that’s a low bar, but original cinematic science fiction, not tied to a franchise or existing propetry, is such a rarity these days that I can look past a lot of flaws. And The Creator definitely has a lot of flaws. Gareth Edwards does a fantastic job of building his futuristic world and making it feel lived-in, but he’s let down by a story that makes too many narrative leaps and never coheres in a satisfying way.
- Not only does it look like a thousand other digitally color-corrected movies from the early 2000s, but The Invasion plays less like a remake and more, as Roger Ebert put it, “like a road company production” of the same story. Maybe there was nothing new to bring to Finney’s original novel, but this version barely musters up enough enthusiasm to even try.
- Sometimes you just want to watch somebody kick the shit out of some Nazis. In which case, Sisu has got you covered. It’s not always the most inventive John Wick-esque, “you meessed with the wrong man” actioner, but it is gory and largely satisfying.
- I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes is a little silly and overwrought—even in the movies, it’s hard to imagine a murder case hanging on such circumstantial evidence—but it works nonetheless.
- Rolling Thunder is a revenge thriller without the thrills, the story of what happens to a man when war and torture strip him of the ability to feel much of anything.
- What’s that, you say? A man wrongly convicted—in an Alfred Hitchcock movie?! Next you’ll be telling me there’s rear-projection and over-the-top set-pieces! In all seriousness, though, while Young and Innocent does sometimes feel like early-draft Hitchcock, it’s also entertaining enough.
- Saltburn isn’t as surprising, and doesn’t have as much to say, as Emerald Fennell’s previous film, Promising Young Woman, even if both are occupied (in different ways) with the privilege and insularity of wealth. And yet it’s very entertaining, and Barry Keoghan has probably never been better. Its targets might be a little obvious, and its twists hardly unexpected, but there’s a lot to thoroughly enjoy here.
- I’m not sure I walked away from Maestro with a deeper understanding of Leonard Bernstein’s career or appreciation for his music, and yet I enjoyed the movie quite a lot. It’s well directed, with some bold and assured choices, and the two performances at its heart
- The Criterion Channel describes Repeat Performance as “Something like film noir’s answer to It’s a Wonderful Life or a full-length precursor to The Twilight Zone. It’s a strange mix, but often entertaining.
For good measure, I also re-watched one of Powell and Pressburger’s earlier collaborations, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, with audio commentary by Martin Scorsese and Michael Powell. It’s a fantastic movie. Maybe not my favorite of theirs—that would probably be Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes—but still really great.
