Hey Everybody! It's Time for Another Edition of: `Some of the Films I've Watched Lately a Few of Which I Enjoyed Greatly

Evil Does Not Exist

Evil Does Not Exist (2023) Hamaguchi. Is the title meant to be ironic? This is just one of many questions posed by this the latest film from the Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose previous effort was the brilliant, Drive My Car. This is a shorter film but it packs in a lot. A corporation wants to set up a glamping (glamor camping) site near a small, tight-knit rural community. The local's reactions ranges from skepticism to outright hostility. We focus on a handyman who is single dad to a young daughter. But plot points don’t do this film justice. I don’t know, it is a complex story simply told or a simple story told with complexity? And the ending. I’ve never been so challenged. But it is a film that stays with you. It’s been six days since I saw it and it hasn’t left me yet and I can’t wait to revisit it.

Jewel Robbery (1932) Dieterle. I have no idea how this picture eluded me until now. What a delight. William Powell is always fun, in this case as a jewel thief, and my appreciation for Kay Francis grows every time I see her. These two co-star in this very pre-code film. Criminals escape punishment, marijuana is smoked (though not named), and premarital sex is most strongly suggested. Damn the production code! Depriving movie goers the rich variety of stories that could have been told for the thirty or so years of its enforcement. In Jewel Robbery Powell is charming, Francis sexy and together they are great fun. Like a lot of films from this era it's short, but what there is is choice.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre (19480 Huston. One of the great films of all time. Maybe seen at a dozen times now. Maybe more. Who counts? Walter Huston won a much deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance but that fella Bogart was pretty damn good too and so for that matter was Tim Holt. There’s simply nothing wrong with and everything to love about this movie. Some films are classics and  you couldn’t make them any better in a thousand years. Primary credit to the director — Walter’s kid — John Huston. One thing I love about the film is the depth of the story. Madness, greed, companionship, trust, luck. Themes aplenty beautifully rendered.d

The Master. (2012) P.T. Anderson.  This was my third (perhaps fourth) viewing of The Master. I keep hoping for more but it doesn’t quite deliver. It feels like director Paul Thomas Anderson was holding back. There was more power to this story of fictional L. Ron Hubbard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and one of his weirder acolytes (Joaquin Phoenix). Two powerhouse actors giving bravura performances but the whole does not live up to some of the many great pieces within this oft compelling film. For me Anderson has made a number of excellent films (notably Licorice Pizza, Punch Drunk Love, Phantom Thread, Boogie Nights) but keeps falling short of a masterpiece. One may be coming. I wish it were The Master because there's so much to it, yet there could have been more.

A Taste of Honey

A Taste of Honey (1961) Richardson. An unwanted pregnancy. Premarital sex. An interracial couple. An openly gay man. In a film from 1961? Who’d have thunk. A Taste of Honey must have been a bit of a scandal when it released. It was something of a forerunner of what was to come in the decade. This was my second viewing and I reckon not my last. There is a bleakness to the story furthered by the dark, grimy setting of urban London. There are unattractive characters, rotten luck, dashed dreams and desperation. But there is also love and hope. It’s a British Jarmusch or Kaurismäki without the lightness. It’s melancholia on film. It’s damn good not just as an early telling of controversial issues, but on its own merits.

Great Expectations (1946) Lean. This movie is positively ruined by one piece of disastrous casting. John Mills (Hayley’s dad) plays Pip starting when the character was nineteen. Mills was twice that age and looked even older. It’s damn ridiculous. You can never get past it. To top it off Mills didn’t give much of a performance. Everything else about the film is excellent and it does Dickens’ novel justice. Notably the cinema photography, the set designs and most of the cast. A fifteen-year-old Jean Simmons features and she’s a delight. But Mills…come on. 

Il Posto (1961) Olmi and I fidanzati (1963) Olmi. Two masterpieces from Ermanno Olmi. Two testaments to the fact that the simplest of stories told simply can carry immense power and make for great cinema. Il Posto is the story of a young man starting a life-long (and secure) position working at a desk in a big firm. Along the way he meets a charming young beauty who he hopes is the one. I fidanzati is about two finances who are separated when the man takes a job that he can’t pass up, out of town. It is a test of -- and ends being a testament to -- love. Olmi was primarily a documentarian and those sensibilities help inform these nominally fictional tales. Everyday life, the city, the factory, the office, the cafes, the hotels, the streets, the passing crowd, are all key characters in these stories and they are in their own way powerful and beautiful and interesting. Two great films.

Postcards From the Edge (1990) Nichols. I’m not even sure what the movie is supposed to be about. Whatever its purpose it widely missed the mark. Sure, Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep are wonderful and there are some excellent supporting players in the cast and boy howdy don’t we love that rollicking song at the end but….What are we seeing here? An interesting mother-daughter relationship? Sorry, friend it’s more like two big stars vamping. The perils of addiction and the difficulties of recovery? As one who's been there I can say we get little sense of that. The prices of fame? Yawn. There’s nothing to see here and it reminds me that director Mike Nichols had a lot more misses than hits in his career.