Twelve more movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (dir. Bryan Forbes, 1964). Myra (Kim Stanley) is a medium; Billy (Richard Attenborough) is a husband who does what he’s told. On Billy’s to-do list: kidnapping a child from a wealthy family so that Myra can make a show of her psychic powers and solve the crime. And then there’s the couple’s backstory. Utterly unnerving. ★★★★

*

Fräulein Else (dir. Paul Czinner, 1929). An adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s novella, in which a young woman seeks to keep her debtor father from prison by approaching an old family friend for money. Alas, the power of the novella, which takes the form of a desperate interior monologue interrupted by conversation, is largely lost in a silent film. With Elisabeth Bergner as Else, and Albert Steinrück giving a great performance as Herr von Dorsday, the somber, lecherous family friend. Available restored, with a brilliant new score (by whom?), at YouTube. ★★★

*

The Kindergarten Teacher (dir. Nadav Lapid, 2014). For once the remake wins: Sara Colangelo’s 2018 version (same title) is a far better film, offering a far better sense of why a teacher might become obsessed with a poetry-composing pupil. In the remake, teacher Lisa (Maggie Gyllenhaal) lives with cultural dissatisfactions and family tensions that fuel her fascination with her pupil Jimmy (Parker Sevak). In the original, teacher Nira (Sarit Larry) is thinly drawn, her obsession more difficult to fathom. There’s little here to suggest why Nira is so crazy-scary in the cause of poetry. ★★

*

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (dir. Robert Aldrich, 1962). Speaking of crazy-scary: this film satisfies in every respect. A star in childhood, Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) now lives as caretaker to her older paraplegic sister Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford), an actress whose stardom eclipsed Jane’s earlier fame. Enmity, madness, sadistic torments, and a strong dash of Sunset Boulevard. With Maidie Norman and Victor Buono as outsiders attempting to do the right thing, the latter also providing comic relief. ★★★★

*

Boy Erased (dir. Joel Edgerton, 2018). Adapted from Garrard Conley’s memoir, tracing the nightmare of his time in “conversion therapy,” with flashbacks to his life in college and a brief look at his life four years after the “therapy.” For young LGBTQ people struggling with their identity and their family relationships, this film offers hope that things can get better. For parents coming to terms with a child’s sexuality, this film emphasizes the importance of acceptance and unconditional love (which in a better world would be givens). For any viewer, this film has pedagogical value: it shows conversion therapy (still permitted to be practiced on minors in thirty-six states) to be cruel and unusual punishment — torture, really. ★★★★

*

The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow, 1948). George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor of a crime magazine, is assigned to locate a man said to be involved in deep political intrigue, but who is in fact the sole witness who can implicate Stroud’s boss (an ultra-creepy Charles Laughton) in a murder. That witness: Stroud himself, and only he knows who is he hunting and why. Fine performances all around: Milland, Laughton, Lloyd Corrigan, Elsa Lanchester (looking like Helena Bonham Carter), George Macready, Henry Morgan, and Maureen O’Sullivan. But this adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s novel adds too much comic relief and removes too much of the noir. ★★★

*

Undercover (dir. John Ford, 1944). A training film for the Office of Strategic Services, showing how agents prepare for their work in “Enemy Area.” One trainee follows the rules; the other, arrogant and overconfident, makes a mess of things. With uncredited appearances by the director (as a pipe-smoking lawyer) and Peter Lorre, and a slow pace that must have been meant to assure good learning. Netflix has the same lousy print as YouTube. ★★★

*

The Assistant (dir. Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri, 2015). A man (Malik Zidi) driving to the hospital with his pregant wife hits and kills a pedestrian; nine years later, that pedestrian’s mother (Nathalie Baye) takes slow-moving revenge. This film doesn’t wear its influences on its sleeve, because the influences, most notably Vertigo and Fatal Attraction, need the whole shirt. Derivative, for sure, but worth watching for Baye’s performance and the suspense. Enigma: what happened to the secretary on leave? ★★★

*

When Harry Met Sally . . . (dir. Rob Reiner, 1989). It’s charming, sometimes too much so, offering not the Lubitsch touch but a Lubitsch punch in the face. And plenty of Woody Allen, which results in something like Annie Hall with a happy ending (that’s no spoiler). Plenty of laughs, plenty of time-capsule, plenty of weird chemistry between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. And Sally Albright’s habit of peeking to make sure the mail went into the mailbox is adorable, yes, but is Sally anything more than just adorable? ★★★

*

The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols, 1967). Always worth seeing again. Something I’d never noticed before: none of the parents have first names, not even in conversation with one another. Something I’ve thought of many times: Ben’s pursuit of Elaine Robinson is really Huck and Jim all over again. But where, in 1967, was the Territory — San Francisco? ★★★★

*

The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972). Fresca suggested this movie, which I’d never heard of. It’s like a much darker version of The Graduate. Lenny and Lila (Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin) have traveled from New York to Miami for their honeymoon. Barely married, Lenny begins to feel trapped, “for the next forty or fifty years,” with a woman he barely knows. Then, still on his honeymoon, he meets Kelly, a true-life white goddess (Cybill Shepherd), and complications ensue. ★★★★

*

Sólo con tu pareja (dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 1991). A serendipitous followup to The Heartbreak Kid, with a feckless, duplicitous advertising man (Daniel Giménez Cacho) getting his comeuppance at the hands of a vengeful partner (Dobrina Liubomirova). Cuarón puts the comedy into sex comedy: linguistic pratfalls, physical pratfalls, mad naked dashes to retrieve the morning paper, and an exceedingly dangerous variation on the two-dates-at-once trope. But there’s also a consideration of freedom and responsibility that made me think of Rilke’s line: “You must change your life.” Beautifully filmed in fifty shades of green by Emmanuel Lubezki. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)