Screen Screed: Thoughts on Movies From a Lifelong Eater of Cinema

      Fractal Man      Cinematic entertainments of the 1930s, when they weren't playing on the level of intimate drama or even broad comedy, were similar to each other across nations in that screen extras moving in organized formations created a look of orchestrated masses.      The 1930s, too, was a decade characterized by peoples reacting to worldwide economic depression.  Germany began to recover from these financial circumstances sooner than other nations due to its Nazi leaders' commitment to building a new militarized society.  The United States sputtered under Herbert Hoover's inept leadership, but under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the country's workforce grew and became purposeful.      The organization and rise of major world powers after depressed times leads to economic competition, leads to new wars, to a struggle for dominance of certain natural resources required by societies powered by such resou...

     Pasolini Again      Filmmakers in the past have tried to adapt big classic works.  John Huston made a movie called The Bible which concentrates on some stories from that thick volume, giving an overview narrated by Huston himself, while he plays Noah and the voice of God--Huston talking to himself inside the frame of a multi-million dollar "sober" presentation of every politician's favorite book.      Cecil B. DeMille, though his epics are spectacular, focused on small parts of the Bible, as in his two versions, one silent, of The Ten Commandments , and his entertaining retelling of the Samson and Delilah story from The Book of Judges.  Any movie with Hedy Lamarr is worth watching, but seeing her dominate the screen as Delilah is pure viewing pleasure.      In Italy, a different approach to adapting great literature came from the brilliant and incisive mind of Pier Paolo Pasolini.  In his Trilogy of L...

      Except That He Only Has Two Legs      Michelle Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns in 1992.  In 2018 she's the Wasp, a.k.a. Janet Van Dyne, wife of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) in Ant-Man and the Wasp .  Pfeiffer has bridged the DC and Marvel universes.  Someone should make a film about how that's possible.      There's another Wasp, Janet and Hank's daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly).  Paul Rudd is Ant-Man, who, like Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is a guy in a suit.  He's not a god, like Thor.  He's not a mutant green anger machine, like the Hulk.  He's not a kid altered by radioactive spider venom, like Spiderman.  He's not an android from another planet, like Vision.  He's not a time-traveling via cryosleep hero soldier, like Captain America.  He's a happy go lucky dude with a small daughter and he wears a technologically advanced suit enabling him to shrink to the...

      Patterns of Splatter       L'uomo dal Pennello d'Oro ( The Man With a Golden Brush ) is a satirical Italian farce from 1969 directed by Franz Marischka, starring Willi Colombini as a struggling painter who nevertheless has one of the best-looking girlfriends on the planet, played by dark-haired, sultry, and often nude Edwige Fenech.  He and his Bohemian hippie friends party, goof off, engage in anti-establishment antics.  One day, bored, he starts throwing paint at a blank canvas.  His best friend happens to bring along an art gallery owner, who sees the new "painting," and buys it.  Willi hits on the idea of painting the bodies of his female friends and his girlfriend and pressing canvases against their tits and asses.  He ends up with a show at his patron's art gallery.  Willi shows up at the gallery wearing a heavy fur coat, which he drops in the middle of a speech, standing there naked.  He keeps up with the s...

      Two Brothers and the Boring Woman They Love      The best thing about The Man Who Died Twice , a widescreen black and white 1958 film noir from B movie studio Republic, is the performance by Gerald Milton as Hart, one half of a pair of enforcers, in Los Angeles to secure a two pound bag of heroin for their boss from a different city.  He and his partner, Santoni (Richard Karlan), comprise a duo of hit men; one of them, Hart, more psychopathic than the other.  They're not the main characters, but the film gets interesting again every time they're on screen.      The movie's title gives away the surprise.  In the first scene, a drug trafficker, T.J. Brennon (Don Megowan), gets pursued by cops on a curvy highway at night.  His car flies off a cliff, there's nothing left to identify, but the assumption is made: T.J. Brennon is dead.  Where's the heroin?      It's in the fancy apartment he shares w...