6u532b

I think it's normal to want the comfort of repetition as a child. Born on the cusp of the VHS era, movies at home seemed like a miracle to me, but they were expensive. It was not unusual in the early 80's to have only a few tapes that you watched until they wore out. I was not above duping a few rentals with my father's camcorder to pad out our meager collection.
I wasn't much of a D*sney kid, gobbling up horror novels and V.C. Andrews incest-fests at an early age. My parents weren't too restrictive. My mother was more concerned about me being exposed to sexism than sex and violence. And if it was between the pages of a book, anything went, so long as I was reading. The movies I ended up watching hundreds of times included a few tepid comedies but also things like The Shining, The Emerald Forest, Phantasm and, just in time for puberty, Hellraiser.
The habit of watching things obsessively tapered off as I aged, but every now and then I'd hit upon something that, for whatever deep-seated psychological reason, I ended up watching over and over. Safe, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Life Gamble and the unfinished House of Seven Belles come to mind. The most profound of these obsessions for me was Detour.
I don't when I first saw the film, but I do circling back to it in my late 20's, when I faced adjusting to a new life as a disabled person. Al Roberts' miserable fate, the existential quagmire he found himself in, spoke to me deeply. So did the crazed, greasy, decades-ahead-of-its-time performance by Ann Savage. Watching her was like staring into the face of my own destiny, giving me a brutal shove onto the off-ramp of life. It was a campy yet masochistic way to wallow in my depression.
I watched the film anytime I couldn't sleep, which was often. I watched it late at night on my phone every Christmas Eve for years, or pretty much anytime I was sleeping in an unfamiliar bed. The film became, and remains, a perfect holy object to me. Ulmer, late in his own off-ramped career, transformed the film's cheapness into a surreal dreamscape, where things are sometimes backwards, or reduced to their most basic signifiers. The film's electric pugnacity, its cruddiness and squalor, set me on fire every time. Within seconds of hearing the strains of Leo Erdody's yearning opening composition I am affixed to my seat, ready to be slapped in the face by the vagaries of fate.
While the era of my intense obsession with the film is long past, I am still happy to pick it back up up anytime. It isn't tainted the way so much old music and other media is for me, dirty with the rancid emotions I wiped on it during some phase of unhappiness. It's still a shining temple on my cinematic hill.
One thing I had never done in all this time was read Martin Goldsmith's novel. Turns out it kind of sucks! While his ear for period lingo is sharp, the Al(exander) of the book is a tough-talking, street-wise violinist (!) who lets loose a childish stream of isms a mile long in the first chapter alone. He is a ridiculous character, a far cry from Tom Neal's soft-spoken, put-upon regular joe.
Even worse, half the novel is dedicated to Sue Harvey, one of the most poorly-written female characters I've come across since the last time I choked down a Piers Anthony. If you don't her, she's Tom's girlfriend, the one he's hitching to LA to see. In the book we get several long chapters about her adventures as a cold Hollywood up-and-comer, her willingness to sleep with character actors and agents for a break, and her catty altercations with coworkers at a drive-in burger t. She's a flighty character, designed to please the straight male ego; unwilling to blame a suitor when she is pushed into sex, and full of regret for every harsh word. "You girls know what I mean," she says often, referencing some abysmal cliché.
These misfires drag the book far away from its central premise of existential crisis; a man caught in a trap beyond his control, spiralling into the dark. With the screenplay, written six years after the book was published, Goldsmith was given a rare opportunity to tighten his story up into its most iconic elements. With the help of uncredited PRC longtimer Martin Mooney and a great deal of input from Ulmer, he whittled his book down into the sharp beast we know today. Much of his ear for lingo remained, but Al is softened and remade into a more plausible piano-playing barfly, while Ulmer's many touches, such as making the second murder into another accident, emphasize the themes more profoundly.
The same thoughtful refinement went into the film's narration, a feature I generally abhor. Here it's a boon. Al's steady patter adds so much to the film's interest and noir cachet by being potentially unreliable; another aspect that isn't really emphasized in the book.

Long story short, I'm pleased to report that Detour is one for the list.

Next time I check back in with Al and Vera, I hope to have Ann Savage's biography under my belt. She helped work on it right up until her death in 2010, after a post-Detour life as a law clerk, licensed pilot, and motherly muse to Guy Maddin.

Tubed.

Watched on Monday June 9, 2025.

Watched on Monday June 9, 2025.

Watched on Sunday June 8, 2025.

Watched on Saturday June 7, 2025.

"Maybe I'll recognize her if I see her face."
"She doesn't have one."

I knew I was in for a rough time with this made-for-TV echo of Jaws set at a ski resort, but persevered for the sake of Sylvia Sidney, and for Joseph Stefano, author of Hitchcock's Psycho screenplay, many Outer Limits episodes, and The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre. Sadly, this screenplay is as phoned-in as it gets, and made even worse by Herb Wallerstein's abysmal direction.
Wallerstein steps on every single moment of suspense; his camera is never in the right place, and he trades every opportunity for a shot of the titular monster with grating POV. The result is a complete flatline. None of the action scenes emphasize key moments or generate any suspense, with the lone exception of Sylvia Sidney getting trampled in a stampede. And that only works because you are terrified for her brittle bones in what looks like a very real spill onto a hard floor. When your most frightening moment is rivaled by a LifeAlert commercial, you have not made a good horror film.
Stefano doesn't fare much better. It's hard to care about any of these stock characters, excepting little Annie McEnroe in her first film role as a traumatized ski bunny. But even worse is the lazy, circular dialogue. In one of the opening scenes we see Sidney lecture handsome grandson Robert Logan about the bloody jacket he found on the slopes. One minute she is berating him for keeping it a secret to protect his inheritance, then 30 seconds later she is insisting that he tell no one so that the lodge's Winter Festival can go on as planned. It's one of those moments where you just can't fathom how this made it through so many hands; Stefano's personal standards, agent, producer, TV execs, director, the actors on the set...everyone thought this was fine? Ok!
What keeps this from circling the drain? Not much. Sidney is underused, and even in the film's deeply illogical climax, (Let's park beneath this stack of logs!) we only see the beast for milliseconds at a time. It's not even a matter of money; they built the thing, they just won't show it to you. But somehow, despite everything, the premise is so lovably goofy that I can't hate it as much as it deserves.

Watched on Thursday June 5, 2025.

James Landis (The Sadist) wrote and directed a spare, thoughtfully composed two-hour Baby-Dollish drama called Tender Grass, with a young Vilmos Zsigmond behind the camera. It looked great but wouldn't sell. So Mondo Hollywood director Robert Carl Cohen was brought in to sex up the film and make it drive-in ready. Some of his additions, like vivacious town floozy Virgina Wood, made the film sing. Others, like the corny and utterly pointless intertitles, drag it down. The resulting artifact is an exploitation treat, full of interesting touches that soar past its contemporaries (excepting Russ Meyer,) while remaining firmly in the gutter.
The list of things to appreciate is long. Zsigmond's images are sharp, textured and well-considered. The camera finds its way into some interesting places for a low budget shoot, including the overhead shot of farmer Albert falling ill, which made me think of Psycho. Landis wrings genuine suspense out of young Jennie's search for her grizzled husband's fortune, and the climax in the basement with its swinging bare lightbulb is equally effective. (I love me a swinging bare lightbulb! Psycho again.) There's also a nearly 360 degree tracking shot around one character late in the film that certainly took more effort than was necessary.
All of the performers are great as well, every one of them. Plenty has been said about The Intruder's Beverly Lunsford, and Virgina Wood is sensationally vampy, but all of the men are solid too. Jim Reader as Mario was the secret MVP for me. He plays his lunkhead straight, and everything about him is cartoonishly on point, from the way he laughs at comics in the newspaper, to the hilariously dopey dance moves he pulls off with Wood. I wish his career had been longer. Even veteran Richard Cowl, putting in a small appearance as the county doctor, is full of flavor. Everyone really sunk their teeth in.
The soundtrack is outrageously good, with some bespoke songs by Don Epperson that add a lot of juice, and the sensational "My Birthday Suit" by Lydia Marcelle which should be on every drag queen's playlist. Davie Allan and the Arrows, a sort of house band for many exploitation films of the era, perform on camera as well in two bar scenes.
If it is ever found, and anyone cares to make it available, I'd love to see Landis' original cut. It may have been a masterpiece. The big turd(s) in the punch bowl for me are the intertitles, which function as a superfluous narrator. They aren't funny, and there isn't one single word on them that couldn't have been conveyed by some canny fades and dissolves. For me, they ruin the film and keep it from being something I'd care to revisit. There are so many films that have been spoiled by unnecessary narration, and a lack of trust in the audience. Transferring the concept to title cards doesn't make it any less annoying.
Still, Mr. Peckingpaw's farm merits visiting once for its many charmed elements. While somewhat demure for being made one year before the hardcore explosion, its drama is worth savoring.

Tubed.

Watched on Sunday June 1, 2025.

Sprinting down a Paul O'Grady rabbit hole on YouTube, I wondered if he'd ever appeared in any films as someone other than himself or Lily Savage. The answer is yes, twice. Once in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of Our Father with Daniel Day-Lewis, and a second time in this sinister medical shocker from 1991.
Chimera was originally a novel that came out in 1980, part of the trend of medical-themed horror of the era that included things like Robin Cook's Coma. Author Stephen Gallagher was already prolific in film and television, writing for Dr. Who and many other series. He provided Zenith Productions with a teleplay of his own novel and it was shot early in 1990.
An ominous fertility clinic hiding deep state genetic experimentation may not seem like the most original premise 35 years later but at the time it was rich territory. The mini-series' first night shocker, in which almost every character we meet ends up dead, sucked in viewers and terrified a nation of children who were allowed to stay up late to watch.
The cast is a rich ensemble of soon-to-be stars who give mostly effective performances. John Lynch, modeling the most 90's haircut ever, is our mild-mannered hero. He's the jilted lover of nurse Emer Gillespie, who leaves him behind to go work at the mysterious Jenner Clinic. John is a proto-emo trust fund enjoyer who spend his days writing obscure Film Comment articles about Douglas Fairbanks' fencing instructor. (!) His world is turned upside-down by the secretive clinic, but he finds that he is surprisingly resourceful.
Filling out the cast are faces like the ubiquitous Kenneth Cranham (you know him from everything but I know him from Beeban Kidron's brilliant adaptation of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit,) as well as Christine Kavanagh, George Costigan's Hawaiian-shirted detective, Liza Tarbuck in a delightful role as a girl on a bus who is unexpectedly down with the criminal element, and of course Paul O' Grady, who appears in the second hour as a social worker who is brought in to speak sign language to a group of chimpanzees. Paul's role is not meant to be comic, but it's easy to imagine him getting a great deal of mileage out of the experience.
The film flags in the third hour, with a boring detour through a nursing home that isn't handled very well. But there are plenty of fun elements. Withholding of the 'monster' (maybe don't put him on the poster?) Children innocently playing with and protecting the beastie-- always a good gag. Sinister government goons galore, and a cynical final act that manages to pack a solid punch. The cinematography by Singing Detective shooter Ken Westbury is often striking as well, despite the small screen constraints.
Best of all are the practical make up effects from Image Animation-- the people who brought you the horrors of Hellraiser and Nightbreed. This little behind the scenes doc by Stephen Gallagher shows the animatronic head coming together, an experience the author and Harryhausen fan describes as a dream come true.
Chimera had a life outside of the UK. It was chopped down to two hours and released in the US as Monkey Boy (Chimera was too subtle for us I guess.) I'd say the full version is probably the better experience even if the third hour is a bit padded.
Though I didn't find this as disturbing as the kids it traumatized in 1991, it's a good time for being something I stumbled across almost at random. And I'll always be grateful to Liza Tarbuck for introducing me to a colorful new euphemism for homosexuality that I had never heard before. I'm wearing my tros backwards right this minute.

Tubed.

Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 30, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 29, 2025.

When we think of the age in which cartoons and newsreels were shown with feature films, Terrytoons, which often appeared before 20th Century Fox features, are not usually the first shorts that spring to mind. And even less so obscure creations like gruff building superintendant Clint Clobber, an incidental character from Tom & Jerry who appeared in a small run of his own CinemaScope cartoons at the tail end of the classic era. The five Clobbers I could find on YouTube all have an interesting ramshackle style, but this one in particular was much more fun than the others. It's noirish and disturbing, with great voice acting and a nearly abstract minimalist approach that feels almost homemade. Allen Swift is in fine form as our titular slob, and that's Lionel Wilson, voice of Eustace Bagge, providing the vocals for LaVerne.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 28, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Cinema Marginal's greatest hit flows like a bullet out of a gun, so packed with ideas, arresting images and juicy details that it overwhelms. Severin's thoughtful release explores the film and the movement, of which director Rogério Sganzerla was a figurehead.
Marginal films moved away from the expressly political Novos in the lead-up to Brazil's dictatorship. They became a form of rebellion merely by existing outside of state framework. With influences as far flung as José Mojica Marins' Coffin Joe shockers and New Wave classics from Japan, the films were acts of artistic rebellion that brought so much chaos into the mix that it took the powerful years to figure out they were being insulted. (Though this film's spirited Martin Bormann references, and its repulsive parallel criminal-- a thuggish politician-- are hard to miss.)
Moments of intense power and beauty punctuate Sganzeria's deceptively offhand anarchy-- the track around the car, the pool hall, the death of Jane and many other shots stop you in your tracks. But so do the small moments that delight with their oddball specifics. Paulo Villaça washing his face in a bidet, sticking panties to his wall, drinking paint, or standing out in traffic with a rifle between his legs made me think of Joseph Despins' Duffer over and over again. A double feature for the ages. Bandit's glorious particulars barely get room to breathe in the jam-packed collage but they give the film its warmth and playfulness.
On the other hand, the film features a bit too much uncritical rape for me to fully let it into my heart. This is not a film that gives serious thought to women, except in the case of magnetic Helena Ignez, who is a real breath of fresh air after the rampant misogyny of the first half. I have a sneaking suspicion I will enjoy her lead role in The Woman of Everyone more than this, if I can ever get my hands on a subtitled copy.
While the film isn't very nice to women, the gay men in the cast-- flirting in a taxi, cruising in a movie theater-- all come out alive, at least. That's more that you can say about almost any similar macho exercise made in America at the time. (Well, excepting The Human Tornado.)
If you don't want to spring for the disc, the film is on Tubi, but for me Severin's thorough context was key. The wonderful interviews with Paulo Sacramento and Helena Ignez were as fascinating as the film, and offered an overview of an important movement that I knew little about.

I had been looking forward to this for ages, but made the mistake of reading the book just beforehand, and enjoying it a little too much. Jack London purchased the story idea from Sinclair Lewis in 1910, and got about halfway through his manuscript before his death from uremia and over-the-counter morphine. Decades later author Robert Fish completed the book based on London's notes. The central idea, an assassination bureau with a strict moral code, is the only component that remains in Basil Dearden's film. The dialogue, the characters, the setting, even the central conflict are all entirely different, and not for the better.
Longtime Dearden producer Michael Relph pulled triple duty on the film, adding production designer and screenwriter to his list of duties. Two out of three he executed marvelously, but the insouciant, swinging 60's script is a flop. The dialogue is tiresomely flip and insubstantial, leaving Rigg and Reed to gamble on their charm in almost every scene. They have plenty to spare, but it could have been so much better.
The locations have been moved from America to Europe, which aids Relph's magnificent production design, but leaves the ideas in the book on the margins.
The bureau of the book is made up of scholars and ethicists of the highest order; men who have argued themselves into a corner and believe wholeheartedly in the morality of what they are doing. Russian figurehead Dragomiloff is talked into ordering his own death by a wealthy young socialist who happens to be dating his daughter. Rigg's suffragette is a welcome modernization but it comes at the expense of the book's main dramatic clashes. Telly Savalas twirling his moustache like Snidely Whiplash is a poor substitute.
While I adore the look and style of films from the 1960's, those that veer into the wacky hijinks of hippie culture or swinging London are not my favorite. (The Knack excepted.) This feels as if it's pandering to the latter crowd in a way they might not have found flattering, though the body count and dark humor add some rebellion. Love the actors, (you know I was on Beryl Reid patrol,) love the look and love the setpieces, but the script is a turd that drags everything down. A slightly more serious film that stuck a little closer to the novel and held on to its complex ideas would have hit the spot.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

"If a piece of land is given under your care, do you know how to plough it?"

Liu Sanjie, folk music hero, inspired legends as far back as the 12th century, when she did battle with cretinous landlord Mo Huairen. This state-sanctioned version of the Zhuang legend remains faithful to the details. (Minus the untimely death and flying carp.) One of the first mainland musicals ever produced, the film was wildly popular. Beloved for its gorgeous Guangxi scenery, cherished songs and boisterous attitude, it won three Hundred Flowers awards and became a cultural staple. It was shown in over 50 countries and repeated on television for years. As Lydia Liu writes, many women of the era grew up watching and adoring the titular character the way girls a generation later would idolize Mulan.
Sister Liu enters the film on a raft in the river, her bright, clear voice traveling across the water with steep Guangxi mountains in the background. She is taken in by a fisherman and his family, and soon the whole community of laborers adore her for her beautiful voice and witty anti-landlord lyrics. Local landlord Mo tries everything in his power to quiet her, from bribery and kidnapping, to staging an epic singing contest with some of the worlds finest scholars; a scene that amounts to a literal rap battle in the center of the film.
While considered dated by some, I found the film's contemporary value immeasurable. Its populist politics are modest and relatable. But just as importantly it's a soaringly beautiful film, a treat for eye and ear. Even if you don't think your western palate can tolerate Chinese opera, its worth a shot; the style has rarely been more persuasive. Given the film's history, historical import and immense beauty, it is a crime beyond understanding that we have only one faded DVD print of the film available in 2025. Surely the revival of the legend via Zhang Yimou's stage version warrants giving the film a proper restoration and worldwide release.
Zhang's musical, called Impression Liu Sanjie, was staged just a few years before the filmmaker's wild success at the Beijing Olympics and features similar startling imagery, with hundreds of performers creating eye-catching patterns atop the Li River, where the show is performed. It has become a huge tourist attraction, though it is said that all of the story's original politics have been abstracted in favor of spectacle and a theme of Chinese unity.
But for me it's the politics that give the story its spice. Given the ever-widening divide between the haves and have-nots in the west, and the increasingly authoritarian attacks on dissent, we could use some of this earlier Liu Sanjie's pluck and solidarity more than ever.

Tubed.
Jack's Big Blu-Ray Wishlist

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Dashiell Hammett started his working life as a Pinkerton and ended it as a staunch communist, even going to prison during the McCarthy era for refusing to disclose names on a bail fund. (Everything old is new again.) In-between he caught TB during WW1 and the infirmity left him with plenty of time to write. His early detective fiction was mostly serialized before being collected in book form and The Dain Curse is a prime example. The book is divided into sections, each with its own wild climax, before the final solution is revealed.
The serialized nature of the book makes it an ideal prospect for a miniseries, leaving each episode with its own climactic cliffhanger. In 1978, CBS decided the blacklists were far enough in the past to attempt one. Unfortunately, it's awful. Robert Lenski's screenplay discards the stylish, hard-boiled dialogue of the book in favor of simplified baby-food, with every idea made bland and telegraphed in startlingly hamfisted ways. E.W. Swackhamer's direction is flat as a pancake, with all the panache reserved for the set dressing and none for the camera. James Coburn is quoted as saying they were going for the look of a film but that's ridiculous, this is as TV as it gets.
Coburn as the unnamed detective, now "Hamilton Nash" is great at being James Coburn but as a 1920's private eye he is unconvincing. Not a shade of noir or mystery can be found in his sunny Matlock-esque performance. Nancy Addison is also miscast and lacks the range to tackle Gabrielle Leggett's wild swings. Some of the guest stars are a treat but in every case the fun is spoiled by the mediocre lines they have been fed.
The book's light politics are somehow made worse; Minnie Hershey, already an embarrassing stereotype, is made clownishly superstitious. The main villain is suddenly queer-coded. The ending is turned into a courtroom drama. None of it works.
There are many great films made from Dashiell Hammett's books. This is not one of them. One star for Jean Simmons valiantly struggling through the terrible script, for young Brent Spiner's awful haircut, and for the proto- Murder, She Wrote font used in the opening credits.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 6, 2025.

My first foray into Michael Findlay's few gay films features a flock of straight men both behind and in front of the camera. This one was a fairly big hit, with an initial 11-week run and is notable for its Sirkian window dressing, campy Mary-Hartman-obsessed dubbing, and a Raggedy Ann doll that was almost certainly traumatized during the course of production.
Straight porn hunk George Payne plays Barbara Stanwyck to Michael Gaunt's Fred MacMurray, and the results are the same for their doomed romance. Their performances are not bad, even though the voices coming out of their mouths are not their own. Maybe if George wasn't such a rabbit-puncher things would have worked out. The anal is softcore and everyone has a Hollywood Loaf, but our leads are nice to look at and they aren't timid with each other.
The cinematography is too closed-in and sloppy for me but it's par for the era. The limp-wristed dubbing of the lover's annoying spouses is inspired but not exactly boner-inducing. The soundtrack is a hilarious mashup of K-Mart muzak, opera and a horn-forward version of The Look of Love, all of which belong to another decade.
It's easy to write this off as a sleepwalk for Findlay and the Ameros, but the film's financial success proves they had their fingers on the pulse of...something. The Ross Hunter-style opening credits and movie references show a willingness to pander, though the film sometimes seems like a straight man's idea of what gay men would like to see more than something that is genuinely erotic. Still, it's title, brevity and lack of respectability made it an ideal birthday watch for me.

Exceedingly gentle and bovine, given the subject matter. Theroux as a bland, clueless non-entity works well as a mechanism to give people miles of rope to hang themselves with their own words. But without more context it feels insufficient to the moment. It will outrage many anyway, so why not go for it and provide fuller information about the military killings and mob conflicts in the West Bank?
And yet, when you take into that this is a BBC production, it seems unusually permissive. They left in the man who includes "all of Lebanon" as his birthright. Is this the same network that has been as committed to eroding the meaning of antisemitism as any American outlet? It's surprising.
It was clever to open every conversation with "Where are you from?" or "Where were you born?" Innocuous in a one on one discussion, but tells the whole tale when compiled together. But ultimately, the film lacks urgency. There are miles and miles of footage, self-reporting from both sides, that could have been used to fill out the picture. As it stands, it feels like something from an earlier era; willing to let your eyes glaze over as you throw up your hands in resignation.

If you are outside the UK and have a twitter , you can see it for yourself here, though it will probably get yanked soon.

"They're gonna kill me!"
"I'm not interested."

Coming to this film so long after I should have, it's not easy to come up with new things to say about Elaine May's perfect mediation on male friendship. Part of me wants to sum it up as succinctly as rcluff44 and be done with it. We've all known a Nicky (or if you haven't, you're lucky.) May gets to the toxic, homosocial heart of the type like no one before or since, pinpointing how they treat people, especially women.
The story seemed out of her wheelhouse to many who didn't know about her childhood living among small time gangsters in Chicago. As a pioneer, she faced mountains of misogyny, which tragically chased her out of the business of directing for a decade (and eventually forever.) Even today among the crew and in the legends about this film there is so much bitterness. Every misstep is recounted; every moment in which her relative inexperience behind the camera showed itself is thoroughly documented, from continuing takes long after the film ran out to shooting more 35mm than Gone With the Wind. But what gets skipped over is May's tenacity, her singular (and yes, unimprovised) vision and determination to take herself seriously as an artist --and go to bat for that vision.
When the film went over budget and took longer to edit than Paramount cared for, it was buried with final cut taken away. May did not let it go willingly, hiding some of the negatives in her garage until the studio could suss them out. The result is that the film didn't really get seen in its proper form with a May-approved cut until the 1984 re-release. And that's exactly when so many of the films influenced by it start to appear; Cookie, Prizzi's Honor, Married to the Mob and other films that focused on the women of organized crime to tell comedic or distinctly feminist stories. I can see the seeds of it all right here.
While the style of cinematography is not my favorite, it's in line with what 70's method stalwarts like May, Cassavetes and others were in the middle of perfecting. The gritty handheld indie gems of the 90's all owe them a huge debt. So do performers. Cassavetes is up to his usual shtick, reshaped by May to highlight its racist and misogynist edges. But I loved Peter Falk in this. He's the heart and soul; the character you end up clinging to. It's clear this performance meant a lot to him because several times I noted lines that he would go on to work into other roles with the same inflection (even Vibes!) which was really fun. M. Emmet Walsh, Bill Hickey and Ned Beatty tip May's understated comic hand. This whole interview is worth watching but I love the bit about Beatty's too-short pants, such a perfect detail.
I'm glad this finally got its due but the veneration has come much too late to get May back in the director's chair, and that's a crime bigger than any committed in the film.

Tubed.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

Belinda Lee had already ed over the hump of her career by 1959. She had seen the backside of top-ten British box office stardom, been let go as a contract player by Rank, and was entering into increasingly erratic behavior; an affair with a prince, a suicide attempt, a divorce, and an open declaration that she now just took roles for the money "so I can live the way I want." This local-to- crime drama counts as one of those cash-ins.
The true story told here by Rudolf Jugert had been made into a film already the year before; 1958's Rosemary told the story of tabloid sensation Rosemarie Nitribitt, positing her as just another member of the ambitious class who were quickly reconstructing the German economy after the war.
Rosemarie was a high-class sex worker who had scrambled her way up off the streets, taught herself several languages, and made a small fortune bedding rich executives. She was highly industrious; in a convertible given to her by a benefactor, she used to cruise the streets looking for single middle-aged men in nice cars so that she could hand them a business card. When she was viciously murdered in 1957, her black book and its many highly-placed names caused a sensation in the press. Her murder was never officially solved. German police kept her head as evidence for years after she was buried. It eventually ended up in the Kriminalmuseum and wasn't laid to rest with her body until 2008.
News of this second film about the topic from producer Dieter Fritko initially sparked controversy. The project was considered in poor taste and had trouble finding a distributor. The final product bears out public suspicion. While Belinda Lee is sensationally vampy, the film is harshly judgemental of its frequently towel-clad central character, wanting to have its T&A and paternal condemnation in one convenient reactionary pill. The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "squalid and unsympathetic", and that's not far off the mark.
Lee's Rosemarie is a cold, calculating liar who treats her maid like a dog. Her one friend, an ex-landlady, can barely stand her. When she is given a shot at the good life by a rich john who wants to marry her, she throws it away to keep working the streets, thinking he won't find out. Men constantly warn her of her evil ways but she won't listen, eventually leading to paranoia and death.
The film is cheaply made and its English dubbing is comically poor. That and Lee's lascivious performance made the film a prime catch for Something Weird Video, who have now put the film on their YouTube channel. The misogyny that drips from every frame is a bummer, but Lee's abrasive interpretation is a noirish, proto-Claudia-Jennings thrill that I enjoyed in spite of the rest.
Like Claudia, Belinda Lee would die much too soon in a car accident. Two years after this film hit theaters she was gone.

Rosemarie Nitribitt's story inspired another film version in 1996, as well as a musical in 2004, both of which presumably take a radically different approach to the material. I am curious to see them, and the '58 version. Threepenny's fine review suggests more interesting subtext than this hasty, regressive attempt.

This fairly well-regarded miniseries version of Thomas Hardy's novel provided me with an alternative to Roman Polanski and Eddie Redmayne for post-reading watch. Directed by Ian Sharp for broadcast on ITV, the first hour follows the story with impressive fidelity, making good use of the book's symbolism. The only blights are the laughably superfluous Pepperidge Farm-style narration and the miscasting, which unfortunately for me included lead Justine Waddell. Her permanently furrowed brows are a worldly distraction, and she plays Tess without her pious innocence, giving a more modern interpretation. Lesley Dunlop as mother Joan feels wrong as well, much too young and smooth to have an adult child and a drunken husband who looks 30 years older.
But for a while things are ok. The truncations from the book are slight and understandable. The cinematography has that golden-hour Michelob-commercial quality that we've come to expect from period pieces. It's tedious, but inoffensive.
As we spin out to the middle and end of the book however, faithfulness to the text wobbles, eventually going totally off the rails. The film cuts out Angel Clare's home life and parents completely. It reduces Tess' long walk to visit them to a line of dialogue. When the wedding night comes we get no sense of the mores of the day; Angel's religious upbringing and societal scruples are never mentioned. Instead the film centers his manly pride and body-count bullshit as the reason for his departure. Modern, but ahistoric and unsatisfying. Angel's sleepwalking episode and its heavy metaphors are gone too. Tess' doglike worship is converted to something less dramatic and tear-stained.
In the middle of all this drama the film decides to casually reveal that our mawkish narrator is the old caretaker of the property, who is watching them argue outside. What?? And why?? It's just tossed off in one sentence and never mentioned again. He's soon back to his important duty of appearing at every commercial break to tell us what we are already seeing on the screen.
The third act is a mess. We never see Angel in Brazil or hear why he had a change of heart there. ("I was in hospital!") His father is never mentioned in regard to the religious conversion of Alec D'Urberville. The stuff with Izz Huett never happens. There is an entirely fake scene created to show the argument in the bedroom between Tess and Alec. No bloodstain on the ceiling.
Tess by the end is a modern woman wronged, who just happens to be wearing a period costume. And Angel is the dutiful lover of a romance novel, full of regret and taking the entire burden of wrongdoing on his shoulders as explicitly as possible-- a fantasy outside of the text. The writer, producer or someone decided the public were too dense to understand the realities of the time period, and would only pay attention if the story was adulterated.
It was tough chugging away to the end. The narration began to inspire chuckles, as did the final intertitle. I drifted away from the screen with relief, wondering if the caretakers of Stonehenge emit an audible groan every time a new screen version of this book is announced. Maybe I'll give the Polanski version a try after all, once he's dead.

Tubi.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

"When you break rules, break 'em good and hard."

Cosgrove Hall Films' legacy goes all the way back to a '74 Benny Hill credits sequence and includes a huge range of animated children's series for ITV and Channel 4. In 1992 they first crossed paths with Terry Pratchett, making an aborted attempt at his Bromeliad. After a restructuring from lack of funds, they bounced back and attempted a full collection of Pratchett's Discworld, with each season meant to be a different book. The first three were tackled all at the same time and on a tight budget by director Jean Flynn. Once again the project was aborted, but not before we got this star-studded version of Wyrd Sisters. as well as Soul Music and a little snippet of Reaper Man. (The Reaper Man clip was eventually refashioned as an "Introduction to Discworld" and played before the other two series.)
Christopher Lee voiced Death for the whole collection, and is as magnificent as you'd expect. He's ed in Wyrd Sisters (the episodes of which were fused into a complete film a few years later) by Jane Horrocks, June Whitfield, Annette Crosbie and other noted British names.
The film is great fun, and exactingly faithful to Pratchett's book. The voices are grand, but the animation shows its frugality. The backgrounds are bland, and while the character design has a certain abstract 70's flair, any masking of the budgetary constraints is destroyed by the keyed-in transitions that look SOV-cheap.
Still, it's a warm, inviting series to curl up with on a rainy day, and bound to satisfy lovers of the book.

Tubed.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

🎶🪩"Where are you goin', goin' Per-seus?
Where are you goin', goin' Per-seus?
To slay Medusa, Med o-o-o-o-o-o-o-sa!"🕺🎶

Hello Kitty progenitors Sanrio sent Takashi Masunaga to Los Angeles to lead a team of 170 animators for their second US feature. It was to be an anthology of tales by Ovid, meant as a Fantasia for the modern era. Production woes and poor plotting lead to a huge flop that closed as soon as it opened. A few years later it was re-released; rearranged, renamed, and cut 7 minutes shorter, with added narration by Peter Ustinov, and a new disco soundtrack by Alec R. Costandinos. It flopped again.
The second version, now available on YouTube, was given the vague title Winds of Change. While the disco and Ustinov add some jarring camp value, it's easy to see why the film did not impress children or adults even on a basic level. The animation is shoddy work with bland abstract backgrounds that add no interest. The character designs are a bizarre mix of big-eared Pinocchio childishness and the ragged Heavy Metal-ish robes and swaying breasts of Medusa and other nude gods. The plot-themed disco is hilariously awful, (and makes Ustinov sound like Robin Leach,) but more damning is the sluggish pace. Even with 7 minutes cut there are long periods of slow development and plot-stretching that surely tested the patience of adults as much as children.
Some of the segments are more active. I did enjoy the Perseus sequence a bit more than the others, with its blind witches and trickster gods, but overall the oddness of this project doesn't make it worth enduring.

Watched on Tuesday April 8, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

This standalone movie was produced in-between the two latter revivals of Jonny Quest on television. It expands a plotline from the second iteration and reunites several voices from the original cast, with the addition of JoBeth Williams as Jade and Jeffrey Tambor as Dr. Zin. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera executive produced. This was the last original animated feature to debut on USA Network, coming just after the arrival and eventual dominance of Cartoon Network.
Initially the film feels faithful to the original series; the wonderful retro-futurist backdrops comprising Dr. Quest's lab and the lair of Dr. Zin have a great feel that transports you back instantly. However the relationships between the main characters are more fraught, and the formula has been retooled for the 90's in a number of predictable ways.
Dr. Quest is into ecology and has a fractured bond with Jonny. Jonny is given a romantic match in the mysterious Jesse. Though Jesse is spirited and a match for him physically, her character design is less Jonny Quest and more Party of Five. Race's love interest Jade has miraculously turned into a white woman. Poor Haji, on the other hand, has not been updated at all; still trailing along in his 60's nehru jacket and turban, ready to whip out some exotic magic powers whenever the script demands it.
Beyond these elements, the film does a great job of offering wild action and globetrotting mystique. Whenever we aren't fretting over the various relationship dramas in the film, it feels absolutely in tune with the original series, expanded in scope with modern technology, but without losing the core flavor. There are many fun moments and lines that you can picture Venture Bros. running away with. Just having that adjacency and awareness of what comes next added a lot of spice for me, and helped me overcome my misgivings.

René Laloux's short filmography is packed with big concepts and surreal, majestic visuals that make the origins of his career, (short experiments made while working at a psychiatric institution,) all the more intriguing. His third feature, made in conjunction with comic artist Caza, is a blend of sci-fi and fantasy that initially seems to pit an idealized individualistic society against a mysterious collectivist one. But it's not so simple. To achieve their perfect society, Gandaharians have left the world littered with genetic monstrosities and scientific failures. Like the modern west they have quietly embraced eugenics and hidden away their mistakes. The collectivist army of robots with their egg-carting Cybertrucks turn out to be the invention of Gandahar's biggest fuck-up, a massive artificial brain that scientists could not contain and threw into the ocean. While we are still meant to side with them and root for their success, Gandaharians live on a mountaintop of lesser bodies, discarded for their imperfections. These are interesting politics for an animated film that farmed out its drudgework to a studio in North Korea.
I ended up watching this VHS rip on YouTube instead of the original French production, meaning I lost the original soundtrack, and about 6 minutes of footage that was hacked out by famous rapist Harvey Weinstein. But I gained an English-language script written by Issac Asimov, and a fascinating cast of voices that included everyone from actors Glenn Close, Christopher Plummer and Bridget Fonda to magician Penn Jillette and drag artist Charles Busch.
The English cast deliver their lines as though sedated, which I didn't mind. The real fascination is with Laloux and Caza's images anyway. The backdrops and character designs are sensual and psychedelic, (some have said Jonny Quest-ian, which is more than fine with me,) especially the class of underground mutants and their panoply of extra heads and eyeballs. Even the giant brain is designed with some sexual suggestiveness. The nips-out society of Gandahar's elite is less interesting, especially our hero Sylvain who is unfortunately bland and unappealing as a character. As a trained agent he's a failure, nearly falling to his death at first with the enemy, and constantly stepping on his own dick with his unearned arrogance.
But it hardly matters. The story is the thing and its proper sci-fi fun, writing its concepts large and illustrating them with huge intriguing set pieces. Though the ideas are more direct and less allegorical than Fantastic Planet, I was no less fascinated by them, and would love to check out the proper French release someday.

In 1968, several of Mushi Pro (creators of the Animearama trilogy that included Belladonna of Sadness and Cleopatra,) created a new animation studio called Group TAC. Though they seemed to put out little for years beyond an educational film about life insurance, in 1974 they delivered this exceedingly unique version of Jack and the Beanstalk, the first film of director Gisaburō Sugii. The studio hung on until 2010, eventually producing entries in the Street Fighter and Lupin the Third series and many others.
Sugii's vision for the iconic fairy tale is fleshed out with memorable songs, unsettling visuals and exquisite villains. We meet Tulip the giant's animatronic mother Hecuba, (Madame Noir in the original Japanese version,) an ambitious witch who keeps the princess of the clouds in a blissed-out trance with the sensual application of eye makeup. There's also a talking harp, enchanted mice, and Jack's sidekick Crosby, a dog who cannot talk but seems to be able to sing when the moon is full.
I wasn't that enchanted by the opening scenes; they trick you into a false sense of familiarity almost too well. The bland domesticity and the film's one uninspired song about the inevitability of capitalism don't seem very promising. But as soon as we get up in the clouds the film really takes flight. The character designs and surreal sets are bewitching, and the villains are superb; the sinister stuff of children's nightmares. The clever Danvers-ish animation of Hecuba puts her easily on par with Snow White's evil queen.
The English dub has voice actress Billie Lou Watt (voice of Astroboy) working overtime. She voices both Jack and Hecuba-- an amazing trick considering how wildly different they sound-- as well as a number of other characters.
The total package is surprisingly fresh; packed with swampy Freudian implications and twisted dream-logic. It cleverly mutilates the too-familiar original to create something intriguing enough to captivate adults as well as kids.

Tubed.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

A movie that is better than the book is a rare thing. This list is based only on things I have personally read/watched.

• Black Narcissus
• The Godfather
• Vertigo
• The Lost Continent
• Barry Lyndon
• The Thing
• Psycho
• Goldfinger
• The Exorcist
• Carrie

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Hey!

Kino Lorber! Severin! Vinegar Syndrome! Arrow! Shout! Criterion! Imprint! Etc!

I'm waving my money in the air- a list of things I'd love to have on blu-ray in the US. I dream every night of beautiful, pristine subtitled restorations. Can you make my dreams come true?

Ongoing list. Clicking 'read notes' reveals links to reviews.

• Sholay
• The Devils

  I haven't reviewed some of these because they're old favorites!

• Night Slaves
• Fire
• Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door
• Aventurera
• The Clouded Yellow
• Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate
• The Unholy Rollers

...plus 76 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My favorite LGBTQ+ things, pre-2005.
I tend to view most of the older films that have caused offense in an anthropological sense. Cruising (1980) for example had gays fed up with gay villains and exploitative representation at the time. With the safety of history and a multitude of content to compare it with in the present it has turned into a great timepiece.
Some things I just can't accept, though. The Children's Hour for example, can go fuck itself.
Some of these are very tangentially gay. And that's OK.

• Tropical Malady
• Zatoichi
• Tokyo Godfathers
• Porn Theatre
• 8 Women
• O Fantasma
• Paragraph 175
• Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby
• Beau Travail
• The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography

...plus 115 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The year started strong; I dove into the films of John Hayes and Việt Linh before moving on to my And Then There Were None marathon. The end of the year saw new writing projects and the continued worsening of my visual disability. These issues slowed my roll but hopefully surgery in March of '25 will have me back on track.
2024 felt like a bit of a lean year for new discoveries. The number of things I was hyper-enthusiastic about was low, though I haven't included shorts or comedy specials here (except for my beloved Beauty Knows No Pain!) Here's hoping 2025 kicks things up a notch.
Thanks as always to all LB pals present and future-- I learn so much from your writing and enthusiasm, and find so many treasures thanks to your constant exploration. Thanks for always inspiring and surprising me.

Best of 2023
Best of 2022
Best of 2021
Best of 2020

1. Filibus
2. Sweet Trash
3. The Love Eterne
4. Beauty Knows No Pain
5. Devil's Mark
6. Ten Little Indians
7. Five Minutes to Love
8. Travelling Circus
9. I Don't Want to Be a Man
10. Gumnaam

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

While this is far from the first list based on Agatha Christie's most famous novel, it is I hope the most complete ranked list to date. (And I'm not done yet!)

The Golden Age novel, published in 1939, is one of the three most often held up by Christie aficionados as proof of her genius; her ability to take the conventions of the murder mystery and break the rules to brilliant effect. (Roger Ackroyd and Orient Express being the others.) The book's infamously racist original title didn't slow it down or dull the public's fascination with her meticulous puzzle.

As with any great success, there were whispers of plagiarism or at least heavy borrowing. Just as Hercule Poirot was not the first great Belgian detective in literature, (ever heard of Hercules Popeau? Me neither, until this year,) And Then There Were None was not the first murder mystery plot to do away with every character (The 9th Guest), or the first to make use of its iconic nursery rhyme (A Study In Scarlet.) For the sake of completism I have included both films in this list.

The influence of Christie's biggest-selling novel reaches far beyond the movies listed here. With the exception of the two precursors above, I have confined myself to direct adaptations (or those that claim to be,) and left off the dozens of films like Clue or The Thing that obviously owe Christie an enormous debt.

There are several adaptations that I simply could not find, or could not find with english subs. These include:
O Caso dos Dez Negrinhos (1957 and 1963) Brazil
Nadu Iravil (1970) - a Tamil adaptation
Achra Abid Zghar (1974 and 2014) - Lebanese adaptations
Deka Mikroi Negroi (1978) Greece
Aatagara (2015) - a Kannada adaptation
そして誰もいなくなった (2017) A Japanese version often confused with the show Lost ID

And many more! There are several versions listed on Letterboxd that I can find no information about at all, and one Filipino version that is listed as an adaptation but in fact is not one. The book has also been made into radio plays, video games, graphic novels, board games, web series, an infamous episode of Family Guy, and so on.

I would love to add to this collection with any other film or TV adaptations. If you know where I can find a copy of a version I haven't seen (with English subs,) I'd love to hear from you!

The list represents my own tastes, obviously. I have not tried to rank these by faithfulness but by my own enjoyment. However, the most book-faithful version of the film to exist did rise to the top. Links to my reviews can be found by clicking read notes.

Thanks to everyone who followed along on this journey!

1. Ten Little Indians
2. Gumnaam
3. The 9th Guest
4. Ten Little Maidens
5. Ten Little Indians
6. And Then There Were None
7. Zehn kleine Negerlein
8. Ten Little Indians

   No review. Most recently watched in 2020, just before I began to Letterboxd in earnest.

9. Identity
10. A Study in Scarlet

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

As seen on twitter! But 15k views was too easy. These have less than 500. [Ed.- Or did, when I posted this.]

• A Girl Must Live
• The Red Detachment of Women
• About Mrs. Leslie
• Life Gamble
• Susan Slade
• Madame Sin
• Black Journal
• Night Slaves
• The Clouded Yellow
• There's Always a Woman

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

John Hayes always gave more to his films than he had to, no matter how low rent the films became. His landscapes of despair are peppered with surprising moments of innovation, dark humor and character that remained fun to discover all the way through his filmography. Hopefully I'll get to add a few more to this list in the future.
You can find links to my reviews by clicking 'read notes'.

• Sweet Trash

  <3

• Five Minutes to Love
• Baby Rosemary
• The Hang Up
• Grave of the Vampire
• Dream No Evil
• Garden of the Dead
• End of the World
• Shell Shock
• Mama's Dirty Girls

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ted Post interests me because he sometimes had a very discernible style and other times none at all, and that style seems to fluctuate based on his own interest in the material he was given. He clearly loved the macabre, and loved creating dark, memorable, wildly offbeat characters with veteran actors who were game for the challenge. I'll be filling this list up as I approach Ted Post completism. It looks like one title, 1956's The Peacemaker, (Ted's first feature!) is not viewable anywhere at this time but I have faith. You can find my reviews for each entry by clicking Read Notes.

[Edit]-Feb. 2024-Peacemaker achieved!

1. The Baby

   I haven't reviewed this because it's been a treasured favorite for too long. The character Ted created with Ruth Roman is the highlight of the film for me, not the titular Baby. I hope everybody had a ridiculously good time making this.

2. Night Slaves
3. Nightkill
4. Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate
5. Dr. Cook's Garden
6. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
7. Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker
8. Five Desperate Women
9. Hang 'em High
10. The Harrad Experiment

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Though my watching frequency slowed down this year after May when I started some writing projects, there was still plenty of time to dig for treasure. My favorite director discoveries this year came both early (Servando González) and at the very last minute (Li Han-Hsiang.) I was also happy to see more this year from Bill Gunn, Jamaa Fanaka, and beloved King Hu. Also pleased to be filling in my Shaw Bros. knowledge generally, which I'm sure will continue next year, if the mounting box sets weighing down my shelves are any indication. Plenty of queer classics (or should-be classics) in the mix as well.

Thanks so much to all of my Letterboxd friends, I sincerely learn so much from you and have been so inspired by the writing I see here. I hope the coming year is blessed with less misery and more wonderful films. ❤️

Best of 2022
Best of 2021
Best of 2020

1. The Boxer's Omen
2. Harlan County U.S.A.
3. Duffer
4. Air Hostess
5. Christine
6. Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway
7. The Jade Raksha
8. Seance on a Wet Afternoon
9. Yanco
10. Raining in the Mountain

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I'm tempted now and then to make a catalogue of movies I own a physical copy of, but when I really consider it, it's too overwhelming. It would take weeks, and I'd have to confront how much stuff I bought and haven't watched yet. Too depressing. So to scratch that itch here is a little list of movies for which I own a poster. Most are hanging in my home, but some towards the bottom are in storage.
My fetish is for older posters that have hand-drawn artwork. Very few of them are photo-based. Posters from other countries are fun too. My Blood for Dracula poster is Japanese, Sister George is French etc. I get them wet-mounted onto stiff posterboard to prevent warping and damage, and to make rearranging them on the walls easier. It's nice to move them around once in a while. Have fun guessing which one is hanging over my bed.

• Katie Tippel
• Blood for Dracula
• Johnny Guitar
• The Devils
• Reform School Girls
• Lola Montès
• Black Narcissus
• Sissi
• Thundercrack!
• The Killing of Sister George

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

22 films for 2022; another great year of discoveries for me. I was especially pleased to learn about director Youssef Chahine and Malayalam cinema this year.
Hot Enough For June and The Blazing Sun would be on this list as well if this were 2024! Links to my reviews can be found under 'read notes'.

Thanks so much to all of you who make finding new treasures so much fun. Here's to another year of discoveries to come!

Best of 2021
Best of 2020

1. Alexandria… Why?

   My most impactful watch of the year.

2. Kummatty
3. Shooting Range
4. Ee.Ma.Yau.
5. Cotton Comes to Harlem
6. Blonde Death
7. The Naked Island
8. Hospitals Don't Burn Down
9. Mad About Men
10. Damini

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Bacurau
• Victims of Sin
• Adua and Her Friends
• Come and See
• The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales
• Sugar Cookies
• The Red Detachment of Women
• A Girl Must Live
• Lurkers
• Kitten with a Whip

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

They didn't ask me, so I asked myself!

I will always feel that picking 'the greatest films ever made' is a goofy criterion for something so arbitrary but I tried it anyway, attempting to err on the side of aesthetic triumph without completely abandoning my obsessions. I feel like if I did this every day for a week my choices would never be exactly the same.

The first ten are my picks, the rest could easily be swapped in. See you in ten years!

• The Devils
• Black Narcissus
• Safe
• Eaux d'artifice
• The Act of Killing
• The Scarlet Empress
• The Loveless
• Gate of Flesh
• Lola Montès
• Barry Lyndon

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Days after cancelling n*tfl*x, I discovered that Cinémathèque Française had partnered to put 12 films from this Egyptian master on the otherwise vacuous service. So began a crash course and a race against time as my last month ran out. I hope to add to this list in the future if more of his 42 films become available in the west. It's worth asking why they are not.

Reviews under Read Notes.

1. Alexandria… Why?
2. Cairo Station

   I didn't review this but it stars Chahine himself as a disabled newspaper vendor whose frustrated desires take him to a dark place.

3. The Land
4. The Blazing Sun
5. Jamila, the Algerian
6. Saladin the Victorious
7. The Emigrant
8. Destiny
9. Return of the Prodigal Son
10. An Egyptian Story

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

For some reason it's been an outrageously lucky year for me in finding films that drove me wild. I really struggled to whittle this down and finally left it at 21 films for 2021. Sort of ranked by enthusiasm but they're all bangers. May you watch something great in 2022!

1. The Spook Who Sat by the Door

   I've reviewed almost all of these if you want to take a deeper look.

2. The Telephone Box
3. The Executioner
4. Picture Mommy Dead
5. The Most Beautiful Wife
6. Desert Fury
7. Night Slaves
8. Sugar Hill
9. About Mrs. Leslie
10. The Clouded Yellow

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Just for fun after seeing noir1946 do it. Forces you to make agonizing choices in some years, and go scrambling for anything you liked in others. (I'm looking at you, 1993.) Tried to fill every year but I've not seen any 2020 films.

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• The Ace of Hearts
• Nosferatu
• Safety Last!
• Greed
• The Lost World
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed
• The Unknown
• Our Dancing Daughters
• Woman in the Moon

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.