Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Max, Netflix, TCM.]

Our Betters (dir. George Cukor, 1933). From a play by Somerset Maugham, with a screenplay by Jane Murfin and Harry Wagstaff Gribble, and it would have been a nice addition to the Criterion Channel’s recent Rebels at the Typewriter feature. “There’s something about these people that makes me feel terribly uncomfortable”: yes, and it took our household some time to realize that we were watching a Wildean comedy, and that these idle rich folk in a great country house were not to be taken seriously. Constance Bennett stars as Pearl, Lady Grayston, an American heiress who takes a lover after discovering that her British lord of a husband has a mistress and married only for money. At the great house (where that husband is never to be seen), we find Lady G, her lover, her sister (with old-fashioned ideas about — ha! — monogamy), a duchess, the duchess’s kept man, various hangers-on, and Ernest (Tyrell Davis), a tango dancer who puts a considerable amount of pre into pre-Code. ★★★ (TCM)

[Tyrell Davis and Constance Bennett.]

*

Living (dir. Oliver Hermanus, 2022). An adaptation of Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1952), which I haven’t seen. In 1950s London, Bill Nighy is Mr. Williams, a widower, a government bureaucrat, an icy enigma to his underlings, a figure of no interest to his grown son and daughter-in-law. Mr. Williams suddenly disappears from the office, and when he’s spotted by a neighbor, he appears to have taken up with the much-younger Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), a former co-worker. A poignant (though never merely sentimental) movie about leaving the world a little better than you found it. ★★★★ (N)

*

From the Criterion Channel features Noirvember Essentials, Columbia Noir, and Queer Noir

Detour (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945). It’s Noirvember at the Criterion Channel, so I had to watch. It’s a brilliant movie, a story of fate (or contingency), made on the cheap, imaginatively filmed to make up for the absence of elaborate sets, with a great performance from Ann Savage, who speaks some of the grimmest dialogue in noir: “We all know we’re gonna kick off someday. It’s only a question of when.” ★★★★ (CC)

Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944). The idea of queer noir might make a viewer rethink the relationship between Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), neither of whom has ever married, with Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) as MacMurray’s amour on the side. I’ve watched this movie so many times, and this time I noticed the many pictures of fighters in Neff’s apartment, the way the pouring-drinks-in-the-kitchen scene looks unmistakably like a post-coital moment, Neff’s “I love you too” (to Keyes), and the funny moment when “Tangerine” plays in the background, and — surprise — it’s diegetic music. One incredible line: “There’s a very good osteopath in town I’d like to see before I leave.” ★★★★

Pickup Alley (dir. John Gilling, 1957). The alleys are figurative, the places where narcotics are handed off from one transporter to another: in London, Lisbon, Rome, Naples, and Athens. Victor Mature gets top billing as an FBI agent, but he has little to do; the real stars here are Trevor Howard as a thoroughly convincing sadistic criminal kingpin (that’s why it’s called acting) and Anita Ekberg as his “doll.” Sudden violence, flashy music (Richard Rodney Bennett), and some French Connection flavor. A surprising asset: Bonar Colleano, as a shady American in Rome, selling souvenirs and information. ★★★

Brighton Rock (dir. John Boulting, 1948). From a Graham Greene novel, with Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown, a psychopathic teenaged hoodlum, Carol Marsh as his devoted girlfriend Rose, and Hermione Baddeley as Ida Arnold, an indefatigible music-hall type who turns amateur investigator to expose Pinkie’s wrongdoing. “I’m like those sticks of rock,” she says. Caution: if you don’t pause for the newspaper article at the beginning and then switch on subtitles before the dialogue begins, you’ll likely be lost. ★★★★

Cry of the Hunted (dir. Joseph H. Lewis, 1953). In the Queer Noir feature, and it’s not difficult to see why: Police lieutenant Tunner (Barry Sullivan) pursues escaped convict Jory (Vittorio Gassman) from Los Angeles to the swamps of Louisiana, where they end up in a shared struggle to survive. The homophile element in their relationship is clear from the start: after the two men fight it out in a prison cell, they sit side by side in front of a cot, panting, with Tunner offering Jory a post-fightal cigarette. With a great chase scene along the Angels Flight funicular. Best line: “I’m not going to walk out on him!” ★★★★ (CC)

[Feet vs. train: a bit like The French Connection chase.]

*

From the Criterion Channel feature Starring Ida Lupino

Anything Goes (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1936). It’s fun to see Ida Lupino playing an English heiress, and it’s fun to see the young Ethel Merman (a force of nature), but there’s not much more for me to like in this adaptation. Only four of Cole Porter’s songs remain (with lyrics substantially rewritten for the censors), with songs by other hands added. Bing Crosby is Merman’s co-star, and he’s just weird, as he often is, doing an odd whistling bit as he rises from or sinks into a chair. I thought I’d try it ’cause it’s Porter but now think I hadn’t oughter, ’cause heaven knows, this movie blows. ★★

Yours for the Asking (dir. Alexander Hall, 1936). When casino owner Johnny Lamb (George Raft) takes pity on impoverished socialite Lucille Sutton (Dolores Costello), his pals hire con artists Gert Malloy (Ida Lupino) and Dictionary McKinney (Reginald Owen) to pull him out of Lucille’s clutches, and complications follow. Fun to see Lupino playing a lowlife pretending to be one of the smart set: her shifts in diction are entertaining in themselves. James Gleason, Edgar Kennedy, and Lynne Overman add considerable comedy to the proceedings. I wish this movie had been made before the Code kicked in. ★★★

*

Breath of Fire (dir. Hayley Pappas and Smiley Stevens, 2024). I seem to find out about cults only when they become the stuff of Hulu and Max documentaries. So it is here, with the story of Katie Griggs, aka Kundalini Katie, aka Guru Jagat, a teacher of Kundalini yoga with a Venice, California studio and celebrity clients. Griggs’s story brings in the stories of two other teachers, Yogi Bhajan, aka Harbhajan Singh Puri, a one-time customs inspector, and Hari Jiwan Singh Khalsa, aka Stephen Oxenhandler, aka Toner Bandit. Unpaid labor, sexual abuse, conspiracy theories, telemarketing fraud (that’s where the printer toner comes in), Yogi Tea, an awful lot of gullible people, and an awful lot of money. ★★★★ (M)

*

Raising Arizona (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1987). Lunacy abounding: ex-con H.I.(Nicolas Cage) and ex-policewoman Ed (Holly Hunter) marry, and when they cannot conceive, they kidnap a quintuplet, Nathan Arizona Jr., whose parents, they figure, already have enough kids on their hands. And the search for the missing infant begins. The comedy here is broad, feral, silly, smart, and unending. What made me laugh the hardest: a hand rising through mud, followed by a leg rising through mud — or is that mud? ★★★★ (CC)

*

Surveilled (dir. Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, 2024). Ronan Farrow looks at cyber-surveillance by authoritarian regimes, western democracies, and private entities, all spying on their enemies and objects of suspicion. This documentary is a dud, never offering a clear or even a bewildering explanation of how devices are hacked or of what can be done to prevent hacking. What we get instead is Farrow, always impeccably dressed, always with a different pen in hand, saying that it’s nice to finally meet a person, and then reading off questions deadpan, as if reenacting a genuine interview. Low point: Farrow being interviewed by David Remnick in posh New Yorker surroundings. ★ (M)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Raindrop.io)