Spitball Army

6.0
[DVD, library]

Wonderful footage of early 20th century L.A. The narrator, however, suffers from “Los Angle-is” syndrome, and continually pronounces Olvera Street as “Olive-arrow” Street, which I’m certain only irks us natives.

https://boxd.it/lw6mb

8.3
[DVD, Netflix]

Elisabeth Moss (who I greatly admired as Peggy Olson) and Boyd Holbrook (who I hadn’t noticed before, but apparently have seen in about a dozen movies) got me so emotionally involved that, at one point toward the end, I had to pause the DVD because the tension caused by their careening toward inevitable disaster was too much to bear; If I’d seen this in the theater without the benefit of a pause button, I would surely have been reduced to tears. Moody, steamed by sepia tones, cloaked in an appropriate ambient score, practically every supporting character has a hidden agenda, and the prisoner/dog parallels aren’t overblown. Recommended, but I seem to be one of the few on Letterboxd who thought very highly of this film – so be it.

https://boxd.it/lupIh

6.3
[DVD, library]

MELODRAMA!!! Crazy-great ultimate Hitchcockian ending scene, plus several uncredited appearances of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. There is a shot near the end of the movie with Robert Montgomery climbing a staircase a la Cary Grant in SUSPICION (though without the light-bulbed glass of milk) that confirmed my, er, suspicions that the similarities between the two films were more than coincidental. At least Montgomery never calls Hepburn “Monkey-Face.”

https://boxd.it/lsePx

4.3
[DVD, library]

I found this screwball animated take on “Of Mice and Men” (in which Lenny gets his “revenge”) to be in questionable taste, but then found myself wondering if I’ve become too politically-correct in my thinking. Still, this is slight entertainment, at best.

https://boxd.it/lsckd

6.0
[DVD, library]

A public service short that begins with the friendly Los Angeles motorcycle cop describing his job and all its petty annoyances. He shares some very interesting driving statistics, spanning from covered wagon days through to the mid-20th century, while we’re shown some wonderful period shots from the L.A. area. Then the tone becomes grim, as the warnings about driving civility become accompanied by wreck footage that is right out of the Weegee playbook. Add color and cell phones seventy years later, and you may be able to top this gruesomeness.

https://boxd.it/lsc9f

7.4
[blu-ray, Netflix]

I found quite a lot to like in this film: the sparse hill country setting; the long stretches of quiet; the time jumps; the aging color inside the Instamatic framing; and, yes, the white-sheet device. And, as insufferable as Will Oldham is, and his all-you-fuckers-are-gonna-die speech was, it seemed essential to explain the subsequent action of the “ghost.” Definitely worthy of a re-watch.

https://boxd.it/lqXGV

6.0
[blu-ray, Netflix]

Witty and inventive in that indie film hey-look-at-this-clever-idea-I-had-let’s-turn-it-into-a-movie way. I couldn’t stop comparing it to BEING JOHN MALKOVICH while I was watching.

https://boxd.it/lrLpP

7.5
[streaming, Netflix]

This is the cinematic equivalent of one of those “A Day in the Life of America” books, where photographers set up at various locales and document a discrete 24-hour period through pictures. Except… This is a video document of about a dozen “average” people in Massachusetts, Alabama, Hawaii, and other scattered American places on the day the U.S. electorate turned the political system upside-down. As a raw document, it is essential. It is also balanced, but maybe too close temporally to not hurt like a toothbrush handle shoved into one’s eye.

https://boxd.it/lrDL9

8.2
[DVD, library]

The third on-screen partnering of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and very funny. Hepburn gets to clown around while wearing a Jules Verne-style submersion helmet, and Tracy gets to spend two hours being his hilariously droll self by constantly spouting isms, as when he says to Hepburn, post-helmet, “Good night, Mrs. Uptake Intake Outtake.” The scene where Hepburn professes her love to Tracy is a word-strewn laugh riot (“I’ve been thinking all sorts of things in all sorts of ways, backwards, forwards, every-which-way, but chiefly forwards.”). WITHOUT LOVE also showcases a charming comedic turn by a young Keenan Wynn, who has the good fortune of sparring opposite Lucille Ball.

https://boxd.it/lkuMj

4.7
[DVD, library]

Typical Tex Avery zaniness that wouldn’t float in today’s politically-correct society. All of the female characters are dames, and the male characters – taking the lead of the lecherous main fellow whose first name is Big and second name is Bad – are wolves. Typically dated humor for cartoons of this period: the “fairy godmother,” upon leaving the premises, leaves up a sign that reads GONE WITH THE WAND.

https://boxd.it/lkmn1