Brandon's movie memory

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an underdog law team winning a defense case that they maybe should’ve lost. Jimmy and his clients: Jimmy takes the case of killer Ben Gazzara, who murdered the rapist of his wife Lee Remick. Now the prosecution…

Annoyingly square 1950s movie with a worm of weirdness in the middle. Mostly it’s clumsily-made propaganda, but the dialogue pops at times, and EGOT Helen Hayes is very good, bringing real personality to a bland mother role. Movie feels like a play, with long takes (ruined with weird edits via optical zoom), the family naturalistically stuttering over their lines. You wouldn’t think it’s the work of a 30-year veteran director, but at least it’s lovably eccentric – you also wouldn’t guess this…

Possibly the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie I’ve ever watched on its own – though I followed up by immediately rewatching the episode. Somewhere along the way I heard that the movie is actually excellent, and that’s not true; it’s Italian Batman Mabuse 007, but the color really pops on the new blu-ray and I got to listen to Ennio’s “Deep Down” for four hours. Eva: Eva (artist’s rendition): Diabolik was in Barbarella the same year, and those would make a great double-feature: jokey…

Meant to be televised in 1969 but withheld for decades because the Stones were afraid of The Who – and for good reason, the latter’s version of “A Quick One” is the greatest performance in any rock doc I’ve seen lately. Staged inside a circus tent with acrobats and stuff in between music acts, passing through a wild Lennon/Ono act and culminating in a decently good Stones set. Of the bands I didn’t already know, Taj Mahal’s amped-up bar band > Jethro Tull’s flutey rock > Marianne Faithfull’s…

Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in The Stranger) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal. Only he’s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town. She loves the place and wants to settle down there, but Tracy likes to move from town to town, plus they’ve gotta eat to stay alive, so already a few conflicts before throwing in the predatory criminal next door (a banker in The Devil Doll, a…

Mom (Petra von Kant) and Dad (Alex Allerson of all the ’76 Fassbinders) are leaving town on separate business trips, leaving their daughter with the mute nurse (Godard’s Married Woman). But all three adults are having secret affairs, and head to the same country house, where they try to play it off and have a good time together since they’re all equally busted. Dad is with hottie Anna Karina, mom is with dad’s employee Bruno, the nanny is with blonde Volker Spengler (fly guy of Satan’s Brew).…

The woman is Anna (of a couple episodes of Les Vampires), and she runs a bar on an otherwise uninhabited island (how does she restock?) with her young son and shellshocked husband. A ship full of sailors and workers arrive on the island searching for radium, not yet realizing their bosses are either incompetent or scam artists and they’ll find nothing. But while there, they cause as much trouble as possible while trying to get the woman’s attention. A couple of famous cinematic policemen are in…

A Magical Mystery Tour parody, I think. A Monkee wonderful-lifes himself off a bridge, then a girl makes out with each Monkee in turn in a single take. A highlight is Mickey puncturing a Western scene by swiping away the fake arrows and walking through the backdrop. Maybe not a highlight but certainly memorable is when the boys get shrunk to dandruff-size then are vacuumed off Vic Morrow’s head. Pretty meaty role for Timothy Carey. Jack Nicholson pops in for three seconds, and Frank Zappa…

Comically evil monocled crown prince Roy D’Arcy (The Last Warning) and his more traditionally evil-rich-guy cousin John Gilbert (star of The Big Parade the same year) are both charmed by traveling performer Mae Murray and compete to get her into bed. Gilbert really falls for her, but the royal family says he can’t marry a commoner, so she thinks he hasn’t been serious. After plans to marry the least-evil of the royals falls apart, she decides to marry the evilest guy around as revenge: the…

Would’ve made a good One Battle After Another double-feature. A wanted couple is staying on the move, low on resources and comrades. Their teenage daughter is starting to become a liability, acting impulsively and attracting attention. In increasing order of importance, the daughter just wants: cigarettes, stability, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, trip-hop. A boy she meets tells her about his parents vacant modernist house, so the family moves in and plans one more bank job. Surely if they can pull…

Ray Milland, even younger than in The Big Clock and hardly looking like his X-Ray self – supposedly quit drinking a week ago and is acting outraged that anyone would suspect him of falling off, while he’s busily hiding bottles around the apartment. Looking crazed and desperate from the start, he steals the maid’s money and hits the town, staying at the bar late enough that his brother and wife leave on their planned trip without him. Ray is so happy with his booze – why would anyone deprive him…

German and British forces and some chaotic individuals are shacked up together in an understaffed desert hotel in Egypt, like a WWII Dragon Inn. The Five Graves are where Rommel’s archaeologist friend buried advance supplies for the nazis to take Cairo. Escaped British soldier masquerading as hotel worker Franchot Tone (Phantom Lady) hopes to use his position to kill Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), but his captured compatriots instruct him to escape with the map details to foil the African…

Follow-up to Soldier of Orange features another bunch of young male friends. These guys ride bikes together and have literal dick-measuring contests, and most of them will meet bad ends. Rutger’s getting too old to play a teenager so he’s the local motorbike champion they idolize. Still too plotty and obvious, but the great 4th Man was up next and Paul’s next couple of decades would be very good. Rien with his girl in the good early days: The girl on the poster is future 4th Man star Renée…

Good manic pervert movie, like a euro-arthouse John Waters, with rapid banter and exclusively eccentric characters. I’ve seen Kurt Raab in four other Fassbinder movies, always in minor roles. Here he’s the lead, a broke poet, having become violent and desperate with writer’s block. His put-upon wife and shut-in brother (a fly-plucker whom Kurt once calls a guter junge, hmmm) are supportive, but he finds a devoted fan of his work in Petra von Kant. Illness, murder and fake murder all follow, as…

Good twisty wartime spy story from Paul “subtlety is for cowards” Verhoeven. Not one of his best movies – too plotty and obvious – but clearly crucial to his whole deal (it wouldn’t be his last film about resistance fighters betraying their own people for profit). Rutger and his college buds bond over his hazing experience by entering WWII (“a spot of war would be quite exciting”), ending up on different sides, then bumping into (and/or killing) each other. Guus (4th Man star Jeroen Krabbé)…

Electro-Pythagorus (2017) Apparently Fowler makes interview/essay docs about oddball musicians. This one’s about synth wizard / music professor Martin Barlett. Both Martin and the filmmaker seem to enjoy small homemade things and handwritten letters – much of the movie is letters and papers being read aloud. – The Way Out (2003) And this one is about another music weirdo, Jim “Xentos” Welton. I couldn’t tell if the Coven-like dubbed staged scenes in unfocused small-gauge film were a put-on,…

Despite seemingly an hour of runtime spent goofing around with ghosts, and the last hour of the movie being exhausting nonstop fights, this movie finds time for a surprising amount of plot twists. Jackie Chan is a kung fu monastery flunky as usual, when their most powerful secret book of killer moves is stolen and handed off to murderous enemy James Tien. Now James is unstoppable, as the only moves that can counter him are written in a long-lost book, which Jackie easily discovers while pissing…

Former alien abductees Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor have to avoid the evil murderous secrecy corporation run by mastermind Colin Firth and hitman Henry Lloyd-Hughes and deal with their doubtful spouses (traitorous Wyatt Russell and loyal Flora) then journey to meet Colman Domingo at his Rehearsal house and deliver an extraterrestrial message to humanity. Heavy influences from Steven’s other films: the alien ones plus A.I. and Minority Report, I am not kidding about The Rehearsal, the final…

Coming Apart (1969, Milton Moses Ginsberg) “Where would we get a duck? I don’t even have a dresser.” Pervert Month continues, as psychologist Rip Torn sets up a hidden camera to watch him have sex with all his neurotic patients, and anyone else who knocks on his door. Women who join Rip include Julie “daughter of John” Garfield (Ishtar)… Viveca Lindfors, the Swede in Run For Cover… and Sally Kirkland of Demme’s Crazy Mama. The online plot description say Rip induces his own mental breakdown,…

Rutger is an impulsive dickhead artist, until he meets redheaded Olga while hitchhiking and they get the amour fou. He does not murder her – that was a fantasy scene to set a sour doomed tone early on, but she does crash the car while he’s being reckless, my second one of those in consecutive weeks. Rutger with a different girl and Jane Fonda: The couple with his friend Paul (Dolf de Vries, whose name was stolen for Black Book): No normal scenes in this movie, there’s something intense or…

A difficult story to film, but major film artists keep trying for some reason: Bela Tarr, Joel Coen, Polanski, Kurosawa. Welles turns in one of the crazier versions, the actors having a great time with their Scottish accents then lipsyncing (very well) their own performances on an abstract paper-mache stage. The opening 8-minute overture over black would be impressive if it wasn’t big symphonic 1940s music. Lady M would not become a star, but had decent parts in Ford and Lang films and voice…

Most fascinating thing about the model life was the agencies, with people in constant conversation and massive client lists in rotating card files. Filipe / Andrew / Brendanowicz

The rare movie with a bird title that is not a metaphor, two guys (long-faced comedian Toto and the curly-haired young guy from every Pasolini movie, both of them very good) are sent by St. Francis to spread the good word to the hawks and the sparrows. They spend a year in a field until Toto learns to talk to hawks and tell them about god. Stalking sparrows in a churchyard, Toto attracts a following, getting overrun with townspeople building a festival around him, finally begs forgiveness then…

The credits roll over a long slow zoom into the back of a conductor’s head – someone has been watching Unfaithfully Yours – and later they’ll steal the Psycho music during a shower murder. It’s a cute mass-murder/mass-media comedy from Serbia, the director’s follow-up to How I Was Systematically Destroyed by Idiots. There are elaborate flashbacks, an opera, a music video, and an intertitled talking cat. No one will be admitted during the thrilling shower scene: The police inspector, having a…

Is it coincidence, or was it planned, that you can sing the words to Silkworm’s “Slow Hands” to the tune of “The Weight” by The Band Went out in a thunderstorm and watched the movie by the band The Band. People who know the setlist take their bathroom break during Neil Diamond, but I’d argue if you can wait until Paul Butterfield is jamming on harmonica, he is even less essential. Dylan has finally gone the correct amount of electric (Very Electric) and sounds good. Joni Mitchell also comes off…

After La Chinoise and Weekend, JLG was hired to film the Rolling Stones for some reason. If the Stones were happy for this and Gimme Shelter to be released, then Cocksucker Blues must be really bad. Are there any movies where this band actually comes off well? Guess that’s what Shine a Light will be. What we do get is beautiful color film of the recording of one of their most famous songs, first as a restrained folk-rock number, repeatedly practicing the delicate intro before the drums come in,…

Lawyer William Hurt meets Kathleen Turner on a hot week in Florida and goes absolutely sex mad, ultimately buying bombs from Pyro Mickey Rourke and murdering Kathleen’s older husband Richard Crenna (of MST3K flick Marooned) so they can be (rich) together, but she vanishes with the money, letting Hurt get busted by his cop friend J.A. Preston (Remo Williams) and prosecutor Ted Danson (the year before getting buried in the sand in Creepshow). The director’s and Turner’s debut, with Hurt fresh…

Steve Martin, grey-haired at 33, is raised by a Black family in Mississippi (mom from Ganja & Hess, dad from Across 110th Street) until one day he hears white music on the radio and goes to St. Louis to find its source. He gets hired by Jackie Mason at a gas station until madman M. Emmet of Blood Simple chases him into a traveling circus, where he’s taken home by the daredevil (Catlin Adams, later a director who discovered Ben Affleck). He meets cornet player Bernadette Peters and they move out…

Two girls meet on a country road and spend four chapter-titled episodes together, this might as well have been named Four More Moral Tales. M is a city ethnology student (Jessica Forde of The Blind Owl the same year). R is a country painter (Joëlle Miquel of Lelouch movies). M agrees to stay over another night after a passing truck ruins their experience of The Blue Hour (a moment before dawn when “you can feel nature holding its breath”, the exact opposite side of the day from The Green Ray).…

Heck of an opening sequence. This silly meta-action movie isn’t gonna top that, I thought, then the opening sequence is followed by an entire heck of a film, to the point that I started wondering if it won oscars. Nominated, but tough luck coming out the same year as Raging Bull and Ordinary People. Director is the toughest race: Redford/Lynch/Scorsese/Polanski/Rush. I haven’t seen Tess, but Rush would feel like a strong contender. This is a good man-on-the-run drama about the making of a bad…