Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Hulu, Netflix, TCM, YouTube, the final film’s website.]

Pursued (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1947). It’s more Greek tragedy than Western: little Jeb Rand (as a grown-up, he’s played by Robert Mitchum) hides beneath the floorboards as his parents and siblings are murdered, after which he is taken in by a widow, Mrs. Callum (Judith Anderson) to be raised with her two children. Jeb soon finds himself hated by Mrs. Callum’s son Adam (John Rodney), hunted by her brother Grant (Dean Jagger), and smitten with her daughter Thor (Teresa Wright). It all comes in the form of flashbacks that precede a powerful ending. Mitchum and Wright are an unlikely but compelling pairing: the one unflappable; the other, full of flaps. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Man Inside (dir. John Gilling, 1958). “You see, Mr. Marsh, every man is actually two men: the one, the world sees; the other, the man inside.” The movie begins in Manhattan, and like the director’s Pickup Alley (1957), it moves across Europe — here it’s Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, and London — with detective Milo Marsh (Jack Palance) on the trail of the stolen Tyrahna Blue diamond. Palance is a poor man’s James Bond; Anita Ekberg (who appears in Pickup Alley) is a two-dimensional mystery woman; the real star is Nigel Patrick, as a tidy little merchant who can’t resist a good diamond. Some unexpected developments on a train bring the story to a satisfying end. ★★★ (YT)

*

X Marks the Spot (dir. George Sherman, 1942). With just an hour to burn, there’s always time for Republic Pictures: cops with Irish accents, a private eye who shows no emotion when his cop father is shot to death, a plot that makes little sense. One reason to watch: Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon in TV’s Batman) has a prominent role (his ghastly toupee is even more prominent). Another: the bizarre technology of “Number, Please,” which allows a customer in a nightspot to drop a nickel into a machine and speak to a smiling operator, who then puts the 78 record of the customer’s choice on a phonograph, with the sound (somehow) transferred to the nightspot. In the world of this movie, there are thirty-seven such nightspots being served, which makes me wonder what happens when more than phonograph is playing at once. ★ (YT)

*

My Gun Is Quick (dir. George White and Phil Victor, 1957). Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) presents as the brute of all time, barking orders (“Coffee, black!”) at a counterman and his secretary Velda (Pamela Duncan). But his moral compass often points to true north: moved by the plight of a “sick” prostitute (an STD?), he throttles her pimp, gives her money to go home to Montana, and asks her to write so that he knows she’s made it back. Her death sets off a chain of events that points to missing jewels, several more deaths, and an ending straight from The Maltese Falcon. Surprises: Whitney Blake (Missy Baxter of Hazel ) as an alluring woman of scandal and means, Terence de Marney as a nightclub employee made mute by the Nazis, Peter Mamakos as a hook-handed thief. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Kill Her Gently (dir. Charles Saunders, 1957). A posh Brit (Griffith Jones) picks up two hitchhikers (Marc Lawrence, George Mikell) — knowing that they’re prison escapees — and enlists them to kill his wife (Maureen Connell). Through much of the movie we have a husband and wife seemingly held captive in their house by two cons, except that the husband is waiting to head to his bank in the morning, so that the cons can kill his wife while he withdraws the money he’s going to pay them. As per usual, nothing goes according to plan, and there’s a twist that no viewer is likely to see coming. You may recognize Marc Lawrence as Cobby from The Asphalt Jungle: this movie is likely his finest hour. ★★★ (YT)

*

What Would Sophia Loren Do? (dir. Ross Kauffman, 2021). When you give up on finding a feature-length movie at Netflix, all kinds of unexpected shorter films become noticeable. This short documentary is a double portrait, of Sophia Loren and Nancy Kulik, an eighty-two-year-old Italian-American New Jerseyan for whom Loren and her movies are a lifelong fascination. Mrs. Kulik shows herself to be a wise, self-possessed, a great talker and a hugely resourceful woman who carries deep sorrow with her, but, as she says, “You go forward.” Try to watch her meeting with Loren without smiling or tearing up or both. ★★★★ (N)

*

A Special Day (dir. Ettore Scola, 1977). The special day is May 4, 1938, when Benito Mussolini welcomed Adolf Hitler to Rome, a political reality that runs through the film, first in documentary footage, then in a radio broadcast that plays in the background, always present. An apartment complex empties out to witness the proceedings, and left behind are a burdened wife and mother of six, Antonietta (Sophia Loren), and a radio broadcaster, Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni). A chance meeting across a courtyard brings them together, and what appears to be a tentative attraction develops — but what in fact develops is far more complicated. An extraordinary movie about fascism, gender, and sexuality, with great performances from Loren and Mastroianni. ★★★★ (CC)

*

The Trader (dir. Tamta Gabrichidze, 2018). Another unexpected documentary, following the travels of Gela Kolochovi, who operates something like a thrift store on wheels in the Republic of Georgia, with all sorts of merchandise for sale: lamps, pots, shoes, toys. Each item has a price in potatoes, which Kolochovi brings to market and sells for cash. This short movie is a picture of grim poverty, poverty of means and poverty of imagination: a boy who’s asked what he’d like to be when he grows up stares blankly in the face of a meaningless question. The most affecting moment, for me: the same boy picks up an item, asks what it is, and is told, “A sponge.” ★★★★ (N)

[Notice the randomness of the goods for sale. And notice (top right) Gela’s bubble-blowing equipment, meant to draw children who will then bring their parents.]

*

The Moon Is Down (dir. Irving Pichel, 1943). Nazi occupation and civilian resistance in a Norwegian town. Sir Cedric Hardwicke is an arrogant Nazi colonel; Henry Travers, the town’s acerbic mayor; Dorris Bowdon, a young widow who takes justice into her own hands. An adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1942 novel, and for at least once, a movie is better than its book. The best scene happens off-screen: the scissors. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Room Next Door (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2024). Ingrid (Julianne Moore), who’s written what appears to be a best-selling book, On Sudden Death, to help herself “better understand and accept death,” is pressed into the service of a friend from many years back, Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war correspondent with cervical cancer, who plans to take a “euthanasia pill” and wants someone to be in the room next door when she does so. The story, such as it is, is relatively dramaless: there’s never any doubt that Martha will end her life, and Ingrid is not asked to assist, which leaves her as a friendly bystander who must feign ignorance of her friend’s intentions after the end comes (and who seems unchanged by her friend’s death). The vibrant color schemes that go with the passions typically on display in an Almodóvar movie seem weirdly out of place here; the subplots (Martha’s husband and daughter, the lover she and Ingrid have had in common; climate change; some Vertigo overtones) are left underdeveloped; the portentous recitations from James Joyce’s “The Dead” feel merely pretentious; and the declamatory dialogue (it’s Almodóvar’s screenplay) sounds like stilted subtitles (I could imagine the dialogue sounding plausible in Spanish: was it translated into English?). I’ve seen nineteen other Almodóvar movies — I’m a fan, okay? — so I was surprised that this one proved relatively disappointing. ★★★ (N)

*

No Other Land (dir. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szoris, 2024). “I started filming when we started to end”: this documentary records the Israeli military’s gradual, unremitting destruction of Masafer Yatta, an area in the occupied West Bank that is a long-standing home to Palestinian families. It also records the friendship that develops between Palestinian videographer Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. Again and again, Palestinian men and women argue with and try to shame soldiers, and again and again, we see the elements of everyday life destroyed as tanks and trucks move into a settlement, knocking down houses and a school, filling a well with concrete. And again and again, those who have been forcibly evicted take refuge in caves and begin to rebuild. ★★★★ (W)

*

Small Things Like These (dir. Tim Mielants, 2024). From Claire Keegan’s novella, a Magadelene laundry story. “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future,” young Billy Furlong (Louis Kirwan) reads in A Christmas Carol, and as a husband and father, he does so, as fragments from his childhood mix with his unflinching recognition of cruelty in the present and a decision to make things different in the future, in at least a small way. Cillian Murphy gives a brilliant, understated performance as the adult Bill: his painful history shows in every word he speaks or doesn’t speak. This is a movie that benefits greatly from a second viewing — some subtle touches probably won’t be apparent the first time through. ★★★★ (H)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)