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

      Captain Marvel      Her name is Carol.  Her name is Vers.  She (Brie Larson) believes she's Kree, an alien spacefaring race at war with the Skrulls, who look like green Orcs.  She belongs to a Special Forces-type unit led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).  As a Kree, she has no idea she's really from Earth until her capture by Skrulls.  They probe her mind, dislodging memories of her life on C-53, i.e. Earth.      Vers, or Carol, knew Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening) when they served together on an Air Force base.  Carol tested Lawson's experimental airplane, a prototype of a faster than light spaceship using advanced inter-dimensional technology sought by the Skrulls.  The Kree believe the Skrulls want this technology so they can more completely invade Kree space.  In fact, they want it for another reason.  The Skrulls are not what they seem to be, neither are the Kree.      Vers g...

      Nothing But Blue Sky, and the Blues      Paul Mazursky's Tempest (1982) borrows from Shakespeare's play, taking place mostly on a Greek island, with a cranky retired architect (John Cassavetes), his teenage daughter (Molly Ringwald), and his girlfriend (Susan Sarandon), playing roles reflected in the seventeenth century comedy.  Raul Julia plays a character based on Caliban.  The rest of the film, all of those scenes flashbacks, takes place in New York, several World Trade Center shots reminding us of what that skyline used to look like.      The architect, Philip, is unhappily married to his stage actress wife, Antonia (Gena Rowlands), who for her part is having an affair with Philip's last boss, Alonzo (Vittorio Gassman).  Since Miranda the daughter hates Alonzo, she goes with her father to Athens where they meet, by chance, Aretha (Sarandon).  Wanting to flee from Alonzo and his entourage (including Antonia) c...

      A Homicidal Bigfoot      Big Legend (2018) surprised me because the thumbnail on Amazon Prime, along with the description, gave the impression of a mystery based on a criminal act by human beings, rather than encounters with Sasquatch.      A former Army Ranger and his fiancee camp in the wilderness near Mount Saint Helens.  Seemingly alone, they have no idea there's something that resembles Harry in Harry and the Hendersons checking them out.  Late at night, the Ranger explores the perimeter after hearing knocking sounds.  He finds stacked rocks.  According to Sasquatch seekers on Bigfoot-themed TV shows I've seen, these beasts do these kinds of things for reasons unknown.      The fiancee gets yanked away inside the tent and pulled deep into the forest, her screams remaining in the tortured memories of her man, who makes the mistake of telling the truth of what he believes, that it wasn't a bea...

      Girls Just Want To Have Fun, the Movie      Janey (Sarah Jessica Parker) is the new student at an all girl Catholic school in Chicago.  Her father (Ed Lauter) is a retired Vietnam veteran, a hobbyist who paints little soldiers and runs his family like they're on an Army base.  Janey, a gymnast, loves dancing.  With Lynne (Helen Hunt), her only new friend at the school, she auditions to be one of the regular dancers on a popular local TV program, Dance TV , or DTV as it's often referred to.      Lynne fails to qualify, but Janey, along with a handsome cool boy with a bland name, Jeff (Lee Montgomery), is selected as one of the finalists.  They have a few weeks to practice before the live taping during which judges will decide on the one and only couple to join the show.      Is this how Soul Train worked?      Whatever the case, this simple story makes for a pretty good teen comedy ...

      Is a Horse a Horse?      Oliver Hardy's in love with a Parisian waitress, Georgette (Jean Parker), but doesn't know she's married to an officer in the French Foreign Legion (Reginald Gardner).  Stan Laurel wants to return to the United States.  It's 1939--that's a good idea.   Flying Deuces has nothing to do with the upcoming war and the political spaghetti of interwoven clusterfuckery going on in Europe at the time.  It's simply a feature film that puts Laurel and Hardy in a fucked up situation, having stupidly joined the Foreign Legion on the advice, ironically, of the officer married to Georgette.      "There's a way you can forget her," the officer tells Hardy after saving him from suicide in the Seine River, but also not knowing he's the man who's been flirting with his cute wife.  "Join the Foreign Legion.  In a few days, you will have forgotten her."      He never explains how thi...

      The Lady Without Camelias by Michelangelo Antonioni      The title, a play on the name of the Alexandre Dumas fils novel, The Lady of the Camellias , suggests that film actress Clara Manni (Lucia Bosé), will never receive the special attention given to great dramatic actresses; women like Greta Garbo, who in 1937 played Camille in the George Cukor film of the same name.      Manni, a popular enough actress due to her stunning looks and wasp-waisted figure, nevertheless fails to break past the judgmental regard of critics and those high in her profession.  After marrying a director, Gianni Franchi (Andrea Checchi), he begins to exert control over her career and life, wanting her out of the humdrum melodramas she's previously starred in.  He puts her in something big, a new version of the Joan of Arc story.  A flop, Clara Manni's film career stands on thin ice for a while, a period when she has an affair with a diplomat...

      Red      Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves  (1984) surprised me--I expected a modern werewolf story but watched instead a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.  The fairy tale is surrounded by a rich chiaroscuro of settings, the menacing woods alive visually with mists, little animals, many of them symbolic like toads and snakes, or cocks.  The Wolf is a sinister-looking huntsman in eighteenth century dress.  He knocks off Grandma's (Angela Lansbury's) head, bursting it into white plaster against the mantlepiece.  We're in a realm of fantasy throughout the film since the girl who acts as Red in most of the movie is a picked-on younger sister in the modern world having an elaborate dream.      Wolves represent wild nature, but also men seen as a threat to innocence, as represented by Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson).  She turns away the advances of the blacksmith's son, only to join, in the dream anyway, with ...

      Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: Cimino Begins to Think Big      Michael Cimino, in a career spanning thirty-three years, made just seven feature films and one short.  I've seen only two of his movies, The Deer Hunter (1978) and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974).  I saw the former in a Seattle theater in the Summer of 1978.  My nephew and I sat apart from my parents, who took us to the movie.  I was probably too young to watch POWs forced to play Russian Roulette by vicious guards gambling on their immediate futures.      Still, I liked the film's sweep, the location backgrounds.  It was the first time I saw Christopher Walken.  In those years he hadn't yet acquired the Walken persona, the famous and odd way of using cadence, the placid eyes, the comedic touches he later has shown a great deal as the Walken persona.      The movie I'm going to write about doesn't star Christopher Walken. ...

      Extra Helping of American Speed Talk       Confirm Or Deny , a newspaper film set in London during the Blitz, September 1940, has Don Ameche playing a brash, extroverted American foreign correspondent.  After his news building gets bombed in a German raid, he sets up a news transmitting shop in a restaurant's basement, near the wine cellar.  The place doubles for a while as an air raid shelter.      Working closely with Ameche is the gorgeous dark-haired Joan Bennett, playing an English teletype operator with the looks and manners of a movie star.  They meet early on at night when he strikes a match to light his cigarette.  She stops him, reminding him of the blackout.  They spend the night next to each other, snuggled together after a fashion, in the Tube, surrounded by families, crying babies, luggage, the thumping of bombs going off.      As he sets up his alternate operation underneath the...

      Octopussy      The James Bond movie franchise took a peculiar turn in 1983 with the release of Octopussy , directed by John Glen, previous director of For Your Eyes Only and three more Bonds.  Starting with the title, the mind runs through fantastic possibilities.  Octopussy herself (Maud Adams, a five foot nine Swede, thirty-eight when she filmed it) has a light brown soft-looking mane atop and surrounding a face with perfect bone structure, eyes pale blue and piercing.  Octopussy (a nickname given to her by her father, nothing weird about that) operates a society of beautiful young women out of an island in the middle of a lake in northern India.  Where else would a rich Swedish woman who runs a secret society live?  She's doing a job with Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan playing the role primly, a master backgammon player, only seemingly, a cheater with loaded dice always turning up the needed number 12).      ...

      Always by Steven Spielberg      There's no way this remake of A Guy Named Joe (the original a World War Two drama with Spencer Tracy) could be mistaken as having been directed by anyone other than Steven Spielberg.   Always (1989), feeling like a 1940s melodrama on purpose, but sprinkled also with Spielberg's habits,   is about a cocky, annoying pilot of B-26 bombers modified to fly over forest fires, helping put them out--all on a scale well-contained and not even remotely as vast as the fires afflicting the western states in these latter years.      The lack of attention paid to the issue of forest fires is equal to the fires being just a backdrop, a reason for getting Pete Sandich (Richard Dreyfuss) into trouble, into death after using his red fire retardant to put out Al Yackey's (John Goodman) burning engine.  Pete's plane catches fire, he blows up in the sky, everyone is shocked, especially, for months, Pete's g...

      Miami Beach, Jennifer O'Neill, Jewel Heist, Cool Imported Cars       Lady Ice (1973) stars gangly and odd-looking leading man Donald Sutherland (father of Kiefer) as an insurance investigator looking into the theft of three million dollars worth of stolen jewels.  His method is infiltration.  He gets a job as a mechanic at the import car dealership in Miami owned by the father (Patrick Magee) of his chief suspect, Paula Booth (Jennifer O'Neill), a fence who has the jewels turned into necklaces and bracelets, et cetera.  She works with Eddie (Jon Cypher) and the debonair Peter (Eric Braeden), with whom she has a rendezvous in Nassau, the Bahamas.      The film, considering its locations, has a lovely sun-drenched look.  The dark blue Maserati driven by Jennifer O'Neill looks like the quintessence of a breezy cool lifestyle, the driver herself one of the most beautiful women in films; long brown hair, a face with f...