My 2024 Watchlist Obsession!

I'm not particularly well-watched when it comes to 1930s movies, but I surprise myself when it comes time to compile a list of those I like : My Man Godfrey, Stagecoach, Make Way For Tomorrow and The Awful Truth are a few of my favourite films of all time. Oh, and recently I remember watching The Old Dark House, which was released in 1932, the same year as The Most Dangerous Game - which during it's first half kind of reminded me of the former. It really is a film of two halves - the first introducing main character Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), who finds himself shipwrecked on an island, the only survivor from a luxury yacht which has hit a reef and sunk (other survivors are eaten by sharks, in surprisingly bloody scenes for 1932.) Rainsford finds an imposing chateau on the island, it's master a scarred individual - Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks) - who is hosting a variety of other shipwreck victims with his various rough-looking servants, who look more menacing than helpful to the guests. Rainsford happens to be a hunter, and Zaroff is delighted to meet him for he also hunts. Having grown bored with chasing down animals and shooting them, he's progressed to hunting humans. That's what leads to this film's second half - Rainsford and fellow "guest" Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) having to survive a night in the wilderness as Zaroff, his employees and a pack of dogs try to find and kill them.

For a film that has been made in the early 1930s, my hat is off to The Most Dangerous Game, which was produced and shot in conjunction with King Kong (also using many of the same sets, and four of the same actors.) The foundering of the yacht relies on effects that would just about pass muster today, and the action-packed final half hour of the film (it's overall running time a scant 63 minutes) is exciting, and extraordinarily well-directed and filmed. Add to that a stupendous score from Max Steiner, which also punches above it's weight and seems ahead of it's time. Much of this seems geared to a more modern audience - many minutes had to be cut from the film because it was simply too shocking and gory, and initial audience members were leaving before the end because it was simply too much for them. Count Zaroff's "trophy room", filled with severed heads and torture devices, prefigures horror films far more advanced than this. I'd love to see what exactly was cut. Anyway, it's not the horror I admired but the action - real Indiana Jones-level work (you know, the good Indiana Jones) where a breakneck tempo is kept white hot for a long duration. Better, I must say, than the violent cult classic Turkey Shoot (in the U.S. Escape 2000) which I still have fond memories of from my youth.

Fay Wray does play a damsel in distress here, but she at least has smarts and is on to Count Zaroff long before anyone else - it's thanks to her initiative that Rainsford is as forewarned and as ready as he is to resist him. Count Zaroff himself seems to represent an old part of society - one that was dying out in the 20th Century (but not before plunging mankind into another devastating worldwide conflict), while Bob Rainsford, the American, brings nobler ideals to the table. Any semblance of downgrading a human being to the level of "animal" is anathema to modern, free thinking idealists from democracies - and as such The Most Dangerous Game runs counter to ideologies which were arising in Germany at the time. I don't know if that was on purpose - Richard Connell's story, on which this is based, was published in 1924 - but it feels like a comment on those who would dehumanize any person regardless of their status in society. Hunting is an activity I hate, with a passion anyway. Anyone who shoots and kills an elephant, lion or tiger in today's world should be locked up as far as I'm concerned, so I'm not with Rainsford on that. Leave your rifle at home and buy yourself a camera to hunt with. As for this film - really enjoyable and exciting early '30s horror, on par with The Old Dark House.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #46 - The basis of many subsequent films based on hunting humans, it entered the public domain in 1961.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Most Dangerous Game

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When you watch a television film called Ike : Countdown to D-Day you pretty much know what you're going to be getting, and you get exactly what you expect to. There's a certain uniformity to television films that depict history or biography (often a combination of both), and that can be both a blessing and a curse. All I wanted from watching it last night was to learn a few historical details, and I counted on Robert Harmon and writer Lionel Chetwynd being in a position where they'd be expected to not depart too far from fact and accuracy. Reading up on it, that seems mostly true apart from a few details and the use of specific terms. We meet Dwight D. Eisenhower (Tom Selleck, in a piece of surprise casting) in discussions with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Ian Mune - we could have done with Gary Oldman) as the decision is being made to make the former Supreme Allied Commander. I'm making assumptions here that those reading are familiar with World War II on a very basic level. From there it's basically a series of meetings that correspond with major decisions being made and events being reported to Ike. Disciplining an errant General Patton (Gerald McRaney), having a difficult, quite testy conversation with French General Charles de Gaulle (George Shevtsov) and conferring with First Army Commander Omar Bradley (James Remar). He has endless back and forth exchanges with British Field marshal Montgomery (Bruce Phillips).

This is all about the war, and has basically nothing to do with Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal life - unless you regard the problems he had with his personal friend, Major General Henry Miller (Paul Gittins), who got drunk one night and let all of the invasion plans slip in front of a crowded bar - much to the shock of his fellow officers, who were aghast. Ike had to deal with punishing someone who was close to him, and it seems to have been something that affected him deeply. That's not to say that sending men to their death didn't weigh on him - a lot of Ike : Countdown to D-Day deals with the man contemplating the ugly truth of war. You'll find nearly one out of every three conversations he has deals with his misgivings about the realities of war. Whenever I sit back and contemplate modern warfare it becomes a concept that seems so bizarre, because killing - one of the most dramatic, horrible and momentous occurrences that can happen in life, and is rarely encountered - becomes commonplace all of the sudden. People in battle have to go through with their activities while at the same time knowing that at any moment they might die. When you really think about it, it's hard to wrap your head around that. I guess that Eisenhower had to have been thinking about that a lot, while not directly experiencing it.

So, Ike : Countdown to D-Day was fine. It went through the motions, but at least contained a lot of information that I didn't know about. In fact, there wasn't much that I did actually know happened, because this really got right into details. Worries about tanks sinking into wet sand on the beaches. A great deal of anxiety about the weather (I knew about that at least). Decisions to be made about how far back paratroopers were going to be dropped (without knowing how fast they could be relieved, it was a gamble.) If you're looking for something more human and personal, you'll be disappointed - this is a very political and historical film, and not at all artistic or humanistic apart from the wringing of hands regarding casualties. I never got used to seeing Tom Selleck bald without a mustache - he would have blended in more if he didn't have such a distinctive, recognizable voice. I don't know if this is accurate, but he did give Ike a very warm, convivial and welcoming countenance. I do enjoying learning new facts and getting better acquainted with history, thought I doubt I'd pick up a book about this exact subject - which is why I wanted to watch this. I heard something about it, and it went into my watchlist - pretty much matching expectations.

Glad to catch this one - filmed entirely in New Zealand with New Zealanders playing the British and Americans playing the Americans. First aired on the A&E channel.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Ike : Countdown to D-Day

I'm not the biggest Matrix fan going around (I don't hate it, it's quite good - but I don't love it as some others do), so colour me surprised to find out that the The Wachowskis' debut, Bound, is an absolutely top-notch crime thriller with very erotic lesbian underpinnings, and that I really thought a great deal of it. It was a movie that I wasn't necessarily in the mood for, but it sure put me in the mood as I watched, starting with noir-like sultry ambience before upping the stakes and switching gears until it became a grand opera of murder, suspense, action and sweat-drenched desperation. It all starts when mob wife Violet (Jennifer Tilly) meets ex-con, mob-employed plumber Corky (Gina Gershon) - sparks immediately set ablaze a steamy love affair. When Corky finds out that Violet's husband, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), will be handling over $2 million before handing it over to boss Gino Marzzone (Richard C. Sarafian) she puts forward a daring plan to snatch the money, fool Caesar into thinking rival Johnnie (Christopher Meloni) took it, and run off together with her new lover, whom she can't be sure she trusts. Of course, not everything unfolds as it should, which means Violet and Corky have to think fast if they're to survive the night and the massacre that unfolds.

One of the very nice surprises in store for those who watch Bound is how cinematically adventurous the Wachowskis got proving themselves here - having cinematographer Bill Pope pull off all manner of clever and visually pleasing shots that add to the feel of the film and don't simply distract. Certain shots look cool, but not simply for the sake of looking cool - they exemplify the surreal nature of gunfights, the anxiety of confrontation, the discombobulation of shock. There's a lot of effort put in here in service to the story. Violet and Corky's love affair unfolds via a gradually heated erotic tension that draws you in, so that by the time they're in bed together you're feeling the heat yourself. Tilly and Gershon share a chemistry that's believable, and Pantoliano plays Caesar in such a grotesque manner it's no problem at all siding with our two underdogs. The danger they're in is brought home to us as the film continues, with graphic and shocking scenes showing how those who undermine these guys are tortured before being brutally murdered - as an audience we're definitely rattled and on the edge of our seats. There's something about bright red blood on white porcelain that sets the heart racing - fear being a different kind of arousal that sets up what is about to happen so damn well.

Violet and Corky's plan to steal the $2 million is far from foolproof and depends on a lot going right - and it's no spoiler (we're shown ahead of time) that at some stage Corky is going to end up with her hands and feet bound together, in deep trouble. The theme of the whole movie is that of being bound - by marriage, to the mob, in prison etc. Try to escape and you can end up tangled and even more stuck. It's something that resonates with LGBT+ audiences, and considering who the Wachowskis are it's an interesting way to read the film as a whole. Otherwise it's simply a cracking, thrill-a-second gangster rollercoaster ride - once a plan goes off the rails and people have to improvise there's excitement to be had in every unexpected situation that can turn deadly. Well executed, as it is here, a movie like this is so much fun, and I had fun watching it last night, but while a lot of the time this kind of film can be disposable once all the twists and turns have been revealed, Bound has enough artistry regarding performance and visualisation woven into it's DNA that it's worthy of future rewatches. I'm surprised that it managed to pass me by, especially considering the extra notice it must have received after The Matrix thrust the Wachowskis into superstardom. Pleased to have rectified that.

Glad to catch this one - Criterion #1220. It won the Grand Jury Award—Honorable Mention at L.A. Outfest and the Stockholm International Film Festival in 1996. In 1997 it won the International Fantasy Film Award at the Fantasporto festival, the GLAAD Media Award and was nominated for the Grand Prix at the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Bound

I'd put off watching Bound for so long because Hollywood's portrayal of lesbians . . . eh. But after incidentally finding out about the queer women who'd advised on the sex scenes, I gave it a shot and really enjoyed it.

Also, this happened last week:

Me: I'm making a costume out of a cardboard box. I'm going to be a robot!!
My brother: Last night I had dinner with Gina Gershon.

I hope that was an innocent remark with the sole intention of wanting to share that amazing piece of news and not him seeing your fun robot remark as an opportunity to make you look silly! (My brother would totally be saying that with the intention of making me look silly.)

How amazing though!!

(I mean your robot costume of course...)

Yeah, it was just a conversation. But it made me laugh a lot. We live very different lives!

Me: I'm having a really busy week. I'm trying to get over to swim in the pool after work!
Him: Yeah same, I have to get back to the Ukraine for negotiations.

The Big Heat ticks so many boxes as far as great film noir traits go, and good movies period. Lets start with Glenn Ford, who seriously exudes a real masculine toughness as homicide detective Dave Bannion, one that has flexibility enough for him to feel right at home with cool wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando - yes, you're right, Marlon Brando's older sister) and his young daughter. Ford has always impressed me as far as his versatility goes, his version of machismo including so much warmth - even as far as villain Ben Wade in 3:10 to Yuma seeming sympathetic and attractive thanks to his easy aura. He's up against a whole criminal enterprise here, and impossible odds seeing as kingpin crime boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) has the whole city in his pocket. Noir allows for all manner of norm-breaking, and I really think we're nudged in the direction of noticing that Lagana might have a gay partner - a domestic closeness between him and a co-conspirator in the bedroom seems to hint at that. This being a 1953 film, I think that just might be the way I saw it - but it sure seemed that way. Add to the volatile mix a young Lee Marvin as hoodlum Vince Stone. Ever since I saw Reservoir Dogs I've thought that being a Lee Marvin fan might mean there's something wrong with me - but I can't resist it. He's the epitome of vile, but it's the performance I admire - not the character.

The movie starts with a suspicious suicide, mysterious envelope, and the wife of the top cop (now widow), Bertha Duncan (Jeanette Nolan) willing to be part of a conspiracy by hiding the contents of said envelope. It's Dave Bannion who smells something rotten, and he won't let go of it despite the pressure he starts feeling from above - he knows that the cop in question wasn't suicidal, and that Bertha is hiding something. The plot details take darker and darker turns until you're hard-pressed to believe this is really a 1953 feature - I was kind of astonished. Late in the film Vince Stone's "girlfriend", Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame) becomes and important figure, and something horrifically violent happens to her that further twists what has become one of the grimmest film noir classics I've ever seen. Gloria Grahame gives her eccentric gangster's girl some fun tweaks that I found really original and fresh considering the lack of variety you see in the roles women would get during this era. All the more shocking to see what's done to her. It all pre-empts a rather strange abrupt ending that nevertheless doesn't feel wrong, just surprising. I was left with a feeling of "wow" - Fritz Lang could still turn out something brilliant despite being in the twilight of his career.

I don't like to harp on run-times, it feels like such a hot-button topic amongst film fans these days - but at 89 minutes The Big Heat never gets to outstay it's welcome, and has everything it needs to tell a solid crime story. If made today, it would no doubt go for 150 minutes. I swear, there's an obsession these days with "more", and there's no regard as to whether "more" is actually better. Quality above quantity I say - tell your story in as economic fashion as you can. I liked just about everything here. The performances, the cinematography with it's surprisingly stark, well-lit straight-forwardness and the charged dialogue. Everybody is ready for a fight in this story, and although I was at times begging Bannion to back down or course he never does - becoming almost foolhardy in his brave all-or-nothing stance. A bright light of moral integrity where there is not one person left who hasn't backed down in the face of threats and violent intent. The kind of character who'll stand up to a mob despite being hopelessly outnumbered. I remember my father's tone when Superman came out in '78, when he said "That's Glenn Ford!" I didn't get why that meant anything - this old man playing Pa Kent. I get it now - I get why he had that reverence in his voice after seeing this actor shine during his trips to the movies long ago.

Glad to catch this one - In Steven Jay Schneider's 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and packed off to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for preservation in 2011.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Big Heat

That one's very good. It exceeded my expectations entirely and was also much darker than I expected.

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Well - this has certainly taken on the feel of a marathon. At my absolute best in October I could only manage another 19 films watched and reviewed, which proves that as time goes on I've slowed down, and no matter how hard I try it's hard to pick up the pace again. Still, add what I watched to the year as a whole and we're up to 232 films watched and reviewed - which is a lot. I've watched what was well over half of my entire watchlist at the start of the year - which means more than 250 more films were added this year. Somehow this thread has led to an increase of movies going in my watchlist! I won't be able to get to 300, it'll be more like 270. That's not bad. One of my most productive film-watching years I've ever had.


There are some honorable mentions of course : Bound, The Most Dangerous Game, America America, O-Bi, O-Ba : The End of Civilisation and The Murderers Are Among Us were all movies I enjoyed one hell of a lot and now have everlasting respect for. Hell, there are half a dozen more that I really enjoyed and have respect for. I'm so much more likely to enjoy a movie on my watchlist than any others that I watch on a whim thinking that I might enjoy them - new releases, DVDs I've picked up for a bargain, random picks on streaming platforms or the latest big thing at the movies that everyone is talking about. Those don't get vetted like my watchlist movies do. Hard to believe that way back in the 20th Century, so many of the movies I watched never had the benefit of being so easy to research.

You've probably seen Inside many times before. I know I had. The themes are different, but the narrative body is the same : survival with limited resources, and complete isolation. The situation, though, is completely novel - instead of the jungle, the desert, space or adrift in a leaky lifeboat, Nemo (Willem Dafoe) is stuck in a luxury apartment that has clamped itself shut when the security system goes haywire. To be fair, Nemo doesn't belong there - he finds himself entombed as he's carrying out an art heist, which feels like karma to us at first. It's not long however before you start to feel sorry for Nemo. The temperature control and thermostat have also been affected by the system crash, which means constant heating and a rising temperature. The water has been cut off altogether, and it's not long before Nemo starts running out of options as his thirst builds. How hard could it be to break out of an apartment? Well, this one is built like Fort Knox, and as time passes with nobody coming to help him, Nemo's mind starts to falter and his interest in art has him finding a kind of creative output that changes this barren and soulless living space into a complex and mentally disordered art-piece.

When Inside started I was thinking "why did they get Willem Dafoe for this?" By the time Nemo started to lose his mind I understood why Dafoe was chosen - someone who just in recent years has played psychologically troubled men in such features as At Eternity's Gate and The Lighthouse. He has the looks of a person who can be vulnerable, but also criminal and insane. He's pretty good in this - for sure one of Inside's better features, although I always find it tough watching actors who have nobody to interact with - it must be one of the biggest acting challenges there is. There's nothing to really react to, so everything has to come from the inside - possibly one of the reasons this film has the title it has. Whenever I watch one of these films I really start to feel the confinement myself, and start getting just as desperate as the person who is either lost or trapped somewhere to find a way out. Nemo doesn't even have the comparative "luxury" of having other people he can cannibalize once he runs out of crackers, caviar, jam, the fish in the fish tanks and dog food. I'd credit this movie with making me feel anguished for it's protagonist - but it's something I invariably feel in every film of this sort.

In the end what is it all about? Inside seems to have a lot to say about art and the artistic process - it's no coincidence that this starts with an art heist, and that Nemo is surrounded by high value art for the duration of his confinement. He starts to express himself when he reaches a certain stage of isolated desperation that you could compare to what art in it's purest form is. Nemo wants to leave something, perhaps because he assumes that if he dies he'll have no way of expressing how he felt, who he was, and what had happened to his mind as it tried to adapt to such trying circumstances. During a flashback, he's asked if he thinks every man is an island - and it's kind of a way to philosophize about how, when you think about it, we're all alone in this world. We might be able to interact with other people, but in our mind nobody can come inside and join us. We only wave at each other through the glass panes that our eyes are, and try to express what's going on in our mind - and art is the deepest attempt at such expression. Nemo specifically takes in William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" and exudes his way of seeing his plight in many constructively creative ways. It has all of that going for it at the very least.

Glad to catch this one - this had wins at the Hellenic Film Academy Awards, Palic Film Festival and Sofia International Film Festival.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Inside

There's something The Believer does that not enough films of it's type usually do. It's when Daniel Balint (Ryan Gosling), an aspiring American Neo-Nazi talks about his beliefs. You see, Daniel is an intelligent, perhaps brilliant man and great speaker - so when he talks about his ideas they sound, despite our better judgement, convincing somehow. They don't sound dumb just for our benefit. He is a real seller - charismatic, charming, smart and emotionally engaging. We know his arguments are born of hate, and we know they're not even worth contemplating, but they're surprisingly clever - and sure to win over people who have an open mind for this nonsense. What complicates Daniel's choice of lifestyle though is the fact that he's secretly Jewish. The Believer is based on the true story of Klansman Daniel Burros, who in 1965 was outed as being Jewish and went on to commit suicide on the same day a story about him was printed in the New York Times. Our Daniel tries to get into the good graces of far right figures such as Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane) - more palatable Neo-Nazi figures for mainstream American audiences. He also, as a goal that runs concurrent with his political aspirations, wants to "kill a Jew", and becomes part of a group who have experience with firearms and explosives.

Man - watching this film right now, at this point in world history and more specifically American history is far, far more frightening than it might have been watching this movie in 2001, when it was originally released. Back then I would have thought that we'd have nothing to worry about in relation to the extremists we see in The Believer, because they'd all be completely rejected by mainstream society. Now I see the possibility that fascist groups might become a protected species instead of the other way around, and that extreme right political figures might actually find their way into positions of power and influence. Director Bean, who is now 79, only ever directed two features in his career - the other being 2007 comedy Noise, so it's hard to discern just how devoted he was concerning this subject, but he wrote the screenplay as well and did a really great job at constructing a believable yet troubled young character in Daniel, trying to distinctly see who Daniel Burros might have really been. Gosling was a complete unknown at the time but carries the entire movie on his well-built shoulders here - a man at war not with Jews or African Americans but with the very concept of God itself.

By the end of the movie I was glad to see that this was not simply Australian film Romper Stomper adapted for an American audience but very much it's own thing - the whole project seemed to be leaning that way, and a little bit of reading would have set me right, but it's simply the fact that there aren't many films out there where the protagonist is an out-and-out irredeemable Neo-Nazi. This movie does a few interesting things and at times almost seems to be paying homage to the likes of A Clockwork Orange (Daniel, when told a horror story by old members of the Jewish community who survived the Holocaust, he sits back and imagines himself as the Nazi in the story) and other films that deal with wanton violence. Most of the other young Neo-Nazis are of course the kind that we're well and truly used to seeing on the news - absolute idiots who are mostly interested in guns, dressing up, marching around shouting and doing things which prove just how ignorant they really are. This shows up Daniel as the odd duck he is - surely a proto-Hitler with the potential to do a lot of harm because of his ability to be a little smarter. In the end though, his aims or no more intelligent than his slack-jawed buddies. The combination makes him an especially scary character, and this film more than a little chilling.

Glad to catch this one - won the Grand-Jury Prize at Sundance Festival in 2001 along with the Golden St. George at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival .




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Believer

The Eternal Daughter was such a sad experience for me. Now, don't read too much into that, because there are certain movies that simply remind me of my mother - she passed away in 2019, and we were close. Movies like Mrs Lowry & Son do it to me because Vanessa Redgrave was the very picture of my mother in that film - it happens sometimes, and it happened here. Julie (Tilda Swinton), a middle-aged screenwriter/director is taking her mother Rosalind (Tilda Swinton) to a hotel that was once an estate that she lived on as a child. Yes - a very Tilda Swinton thing to do, play both the mother and daughter. Rumour is this hotel is haunted, and indeed Julie is absolutely plagued with odd noises at night, bumps and murmurs - but the really freaky stuff occurs when she's out at night with her dog Louis (either letting him out to do his business, or searching for him when he's run off), when she sees ghostly apparitions in the windows. Even more trying than that however is her obsession that everything be perfect, and her compulsive desire to please her mother and see that she's completely happy every moment of the day. It's a mindset sure to break down any individual, and force them to confront their emotions in and honest and forthright manner.

So, for those who want to know (I won't reveal spoilers in this review), this is more a "relationship between mother and daughter" movie than a haunted house ghost story, although there is certainly a sense of things going bump in the night. It's a weird visit to a fair-sized hotel, because it seems that Julie and Rosalind are the only two there - and that starts to make more sense when you find out that this was made at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wales when a lockdown had gone into effect. There's a grand total of 5 actors in this film, and two of those are very briefly seen. There's never any mention of why the entire hotel is empty, and there's even a weird confrontation at the start where Julie has trouble with her booking and which room she wants despite every other room in the place seemingly being available. The Hotel Receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davies) is curt, rude, impatient, lazy and generally sour - not the best mix when dealing with a fussy, obsessive-compulsive, needy and delicate guest. In fact, I kind of expected that to go somewhere - but instead it just is what it is. You get a sense of how far Julie is from the norm when you compare her to her mother, who is quite happy with most everything and sleeps very soundly at night.

So, how did I like this? I was moved, but I still haven't quite come to terms with how I feel about the double performance here. I ended up asking myself far too many questions when presented with the way this is filmed - mostly without both Julie and Rosalind in the same shot, so you'll watch Tilda Swinton say something, then cut to a slightly different Tilda Swinton answering and so on. Rosalind does eventually interact with the caretaker at the hotel - and I mention this because surely like me everyone will ask the pertinent question - "Is Julie's mother really there?" It's a part of the cinematic landscape now, so audiences must be aware enough to always ask the question. The fact that it always looks like Tilda Swinton talking to herself only heightens that uncertainty. This is an empty hotel filled with ghosts after all. Regardless of how this ends however, it is touching and I personally connected with it - I think Swinton does a fine job in a supremely difficult position by carrying double the load. Joanna Hogg uses sound in very ingenious ways to unnerve us when we sense some kind of paranormal entity lurks the halls, and makes us search in the darkness for spectral whisps - but in the end it's a much more internal haunting that's happening in The Eternal Daughter.

Glad to catch this one - on critics' "Best of 2022" lists this came 2nd on Molly Haskell's (Screen Slate), David Sims' (The Atlantic) and Florence Almozini's (Film Comment Poll) and 3rd on Monica Castillo's (RogerEbert.com) and Justin Chang's (The Los Angeles Times).




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch The Eternal Daughter

Loved this movie. Saw it twice.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

There's an uneasy balance coded into Starbuck's DNA that made the movie feel a little disingenuous to me as far as character goes, and I'll get it out of the way at the outset. Main character David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) - otherwise known as "Starbuck" - is a screw-up of monumental proportions. He owes the mob (the Canadian mob?) $80,000, and is forced to grow weed in his apartment. He messes up everything he's put in charge of - including getting his soccer team the uniforms needed for the start of the season. He can hardly do the easiest job related to his family's business - delivering meat. The central core of the film is the fact that he donated so much sperm for cash at a Quebec sperm bank that he's fathered 533 children. As much as I liked this movie in general, Wozniak does not go on to earn the reputation he's saddled with at the start. I don't think he had to be a bad person - of course not - but his character goes on to do resoundingly well at everything he sets his mind to, and by the end of the film I couldn't square the Wozniak I was introduced to at the start of the film and the Wozniak I knew by the end. They were two completely different characters. You'd feel well entitled to put the Wozniak at the end of the film in charge of organizing the Olympic Games. I'm not talking about his redemption - I'm simply talking about his character, and his capabilities.

Wozniak learns about his multiple progeny when a group of over 100 try to overturn his confidentiality agreement so they can find out who their father is. When he receives a file with their various profiles in it, he secretly starts to either introduce himself to them (without the admission that he's "Starbuck") or follow them - and begins to help each one in whichever way he can. Soon he becomes part of the group, without the group knowing that he's the one they're looking for. In the meantime his girlfriend, Valérie (Julie Le Breton) gives him the news that she's pregnant, and although doubtful at first, he discovers he does have what it takes to be a father after interacting with his various adult kids. Helping him with the wrangle over his confidentiality is his lawyer friend - played by Antoine Bertrand. The film is funny enough without being a complete riot, and quite cheery. I found it so hard to stay conscious of the fact that this is set in Canada, because of the fact that everyone is speaking French. In fact, it took until the mid-point of the film before I realised at all that this was Canadian, and not a French film. Quebec still hasn't seceded - and don't get me started about how I used to think there'd be fewer and fewer different countries in the world as time passed, but it seems that there's more and more as nations break down into different autonomous groups.

Anyway, if you like really sweet films and you're not averse to finding out that the main character in this, despite the way he's introduced, has an absolute heart of 24 karat gold and is a beautiful person, then you might like this movie. It has a good sense of humour, and Patrick Huard can absolutely play the part. Antoine Bertrand is pretty funny as well as the lawyer with kids of his own who keeps trying to tell Wozniak that parenting is a nightmare. I kept on waiting for our protagonist to screw everything up, because his character was totally set up to do that, and in most other films of this sort he'd mess it all up big time before earning his redemption - but instead Starbuck is stupendously great and everything he does to help his adult offspring comes up roses. I'm sorry if that's spoiler territory - but that's such a large part of how this movie is unusual. In any case - the main dilemma here is whether he decides to tell all of these people that he's their father, and if Valérie wants him to be a part of her and her kid's life. Thing is, it makes no sense by the end because we learn that David Wozniak is the perfect man, and a wonderful father. That's a completely different person to the one we meet at the start of the film - the incompetent mess who was in deep with the mob. I guess finding out you've fathered over 500 kids is the wake-up call every down and out schlub needs to get their life together and stop messing around. In Starbuck, it looks kind of fun.

Glad to catch this one - remade twice - in France as Fonzy in 2013 and in the United States as Delivery Man that same year, with Vince Vaughn in the lead role.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Starbuck

Excited to hear what you think about Blacker Than the Night.

(I HIGHLY identified with a certain character, and I'll say no more until you watch it!)

Fantastic movie. Just really hit me when I finally saw it a few years back.

They're young, cheerful and wear strikingly colourful clothes, but the young ladies in Blacker Than Night are a generational force that are about to defile what's sacred in this Carlos Enrique Taboada horror film. It's one that aims high - the cat at the center of much of the drama is called Bécquer, after a 19th Century Spanish poet and writer of such horror tales this is. I'm always going to side with the cat - especially a soon-to-be orphan named after a semi-obscure wordsmith. You see, it belongs to old Tia Susana (Tamara Garina), who immediately dies - leaving her estate to her only living relative, young Ofelia (Claudia Islas). There's one heartfelt condition though - she must look after Bécquer and see that he comes to no harm. Ofelia decides to move into to the regal old house Susana left to her, and invites her young friends - Aurora (Susana Dosamantes), Marta (Lucía Méndez) and Pilar (Helena Rojo). They waste no time declaring to the old maid Sofia (Alicia Palacios) how ugly everything is - but save their most vicious scorn for Bécquer. The cat only wants it's favourite spots (and Aurora's bird) but the girls' desecration will stop at nothing and it's not long before something or somebody has to step in and start evicting these tenants from the house so they can find other accommodations six feet under ground.

This was probably the one of the best horror films I've seen that deals with generational gaps and the difficult divide that exists between the very young and the very old. When you add a black cat to the mix, there's almost a desire for people who are young and carefree to label Tia Susana an old witch. The lack of respect the young women show kind of culminates in a great multidimensional scene where they all try on old clothes and ruthlessly mock out-of-date fashion statements while the camera leers at the actresses as if to accentuate the power they exert because of their age. If you weren't already feeling for the departed soul whose life this all represents, Taboada shows Susana peering through a window as if she's not dead. As if things couldn't get any worse, the girls find Susana's old wedding dress, which they snatch despite the best efforts of Bécquer to stop things going this far. The importance of tradition and that which is sanctified is something you can tell young people about, but you never really feel it until you get older - and for me back then and most young people it's true when you say "nothing's sacred". When one of the girls mentions how she finds a statue she comes across hideous, Sofia tries to explain to her where it came from and what it means - to little effect.

First and foremost - cat abuse is horror to me, so if you harm one in any way you deserve what's coming to you. Sofia never went as far as to plead that Ofelia look after her things and treat them with respect - but she did stick her neck out for her precious Bécquer, and there's little sympathy shown either way. When death does occur in the movie, it has some of the visual qualities I associate with giallo movies - but I'm certainly no expert when it comes to that genre, so don't quote me on that. You also feel the faint echo of proto-slasher stirrings by the time the film ends, if that makes any sense. What impressed me though (despite the fact that there are many villains) was the fact that this was a Bechdel test-smashing, fully committed movie where woman are the complete focus and driving force, while men are unimportant side characters. Both Carlos Enrique Taboada films I've seen have come completely from a female perspective - and his one moment of leering was message-driven and not simply voyeuristic. Refreshing for a movie in the mid-70s, where women's liberation was certainly up and moving in Mexico but not established in all walks of life. Intelligent and well-shot, with superb production values and set design, this is a horror film with a really satisfying literary feel to it. I'm definitely checking out more of Carlos Enrique Taboada's stuff.

Glad to catch this one - this was remade in 2014, again in Mexico with the slightly different title Darker Than Night - it's in 3D and was directed by Henry Bedwell.




Thank you very much to whomever inspired me to watch Blacker Than Night

I'm so glad you liked it!

I particularly enjoy the fact that .

Like you say, there's an interesting cultural gap between the older and younger characters.( In this film it's the younger people who come off terribly, but we all know that older generations can be very dismissive of young people.)

And I also appreciated that the film treats

There's a compelling dynamic in this with Sofia, the older character, being a maid, and thus certainly expected to hold her tongue and not tell the girls exactly what she's thinking - even when she's being badmouthed for no particular reason other than the fact that there's a generational gap and she cares about stuff. She's in a terrible position because I don't think you could easily quit and leave a place you've lived for a long time, so suddenly you're beholden to these young people who have no respect for anything - I really felt for her. You could tell what she was thinking a lot of the time.

Agreed. The tensions cut across socio-economic lines and generational lines. The house is, in effect, more Sofia's than anyone else's, and yet she has no say over it.