Category Archives: film

Oscars Live Action Shorts

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We squeezed in a trip to the local movie house to see the live action shorts the day before the awards ceremony. They were all fresh in our minds, and we both felt the Oscar went to the least interesting of them! Nevertheless, there’s something watchable for people of widely varying tastes. A characteristic common to four of the five nominees was that the ending was notably ambiguous. What happens next? We don’t know. Also, this year, none of them was particularly long. They’re in theaters so briefly, in case you missed them, here they are and how you can see them.

A Lien (USA)

A terrifying look at how America’s immigration crackdowns wield law and policy in unfair and dehumanizing ways. It involves a young couple—she’s American; he’s from Central America and has lived here for decades—visiting an immigration center with all their paperwork so he can get the green card he’s absolutely eligible for. What’s scariest is that you feel that such things happen not because the system is broken, but because it’s operating exactly as intended. (Watch it here.)

Anuja (India, USA)

Nine-year-old Anuja must choose between going to work in a sewing factory with her older sister and taking a test that may get her into a tuition-free school for gifted students. It’s a choice between the demands of the here-and-now versus the possibility of greater benefit in the future. The sisters—played by real-life street children—are charming. (Available for viewing on Netflix)

The Last Ranger (South Africa)

At a South African wildlife preserve, rangers engage in the dangerous job of protecting rhinoceroses from poachers. Stealing the horn is a lucrative business, and the film never lets you forget how noble are the rangers and how evil are the poachers. A young girl goes with the ranger one day. She’s charming, and the scenery is spectacular. (Apparently not available for streaming)

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (Croatia)

In 1993, a passenger train crossing Bosnia-Herzegovina is stopped by armed paramilitaries. They board, demanding to examine people’s papers. This conjures memories of every “escape from Nazi Germany” movie you ever saw. The people sharing a compartment with a man who admits he has no papers have to make choices, silence or courage. Based on the real-life Štrpci massacre and the death of Tomo Buzov, a former Yugoslav army officer. The film won the Short Film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2024. (Watch it here.)

And now the winner: I’m Not a Robot (Belgium, Netherlands)

We see the action from the point of view of a woman working in the music business who fails her CAPTCHA test so many times her computer concludes she’s a robot. The absurdity of the situation spirals downward, as her grip on reality loosens. I wasn’t convinced. (See it here.)

Sympathy for Academy Awards Voters

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Academy Award, Oscar

I’m sure glad I don’t have to pick the Best Picture winner in this year’s Academy Awards pool of ten. The four nominees we’ve seen are excellent films with brilliant acting, interesting stories, and cinematic flourishes. Assuming votes are cast based on people’s true assessment of excellence, not corporate loyalties, they have their job cut out for them.

We skipped Anora when it was in the local theater because the preview was so off-putting. Now that was a mistake. Several of the others haven’t come to Princeton yet. But here’s what we’ve seen.

The Brutalist—a moving story about mid-twentieth century Jew (Adrian Brody), whose excellence as an architect doesn’t protect him from the Nazis. He survives to create a new life and new work with his wife (Felicity Jones) about twenty miles from where I live in a fictional version of Doylestown, Pa. What happens to him thereafter makes you wonder whether the movie title refers to his architectural style or certain characters in the film.

A Complete Unknown—Bob Dylan’s career up until the legendary set he did at the Newport Folk Festival about which much has been said and written. The producers made the excellent decision to include lots of music, and Timothée Chalamet sings the songs himself. A wonderful trip into forests of nostalgia—for the music, for the times, for the hope embedded therein.

Conclave—based on a novel by the excellent Robert Harris (my review of his Precipice is here), with a can’t-go-wrong cast of Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini. It’s about the election of a new pope (awkward timing) and the ostensibly stodgy proceedings that result in earthquakes.

Dune: Part Two—Loved the books; so willing to cut the movie some slack with respect to Austin Butler’s alien makeup. The acting and scenery were fantastic. Ditto the special effects which were so good they were distracting. (How’d they DO that?!) Timothée Chalamet again, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem.

Coming soon: The Nickel Boys. Looking forward to it!

Dark Streets and Dark Deeds

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The last two films in our class on neo-noir were A Simple Plan and the remake of the classic noir, Nightmare Alley (which I’d seen in a movie theater and was NOT looking forward to!).

A Simple Plan
I guess we should have learned from previously seeing the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple that, when it comes to murderous intent, nothing is simple. And it sure isn’t in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, written by Scott B. Smith, author of the novel the film is based on (trailer).

Straight-arrow Hank Mitchell (played by Bill Paxton), his slower-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) discover a small plane that has crashed in the snowy woods of rural Minnesota. They check on the pilot, who’s dead, of course, and discover a duffel stuffed with more than $4 million. Whose is it? What to do with it?

As you will anticipate, this stash brings out all the characters’ worst instincts. Even Hank and his wife (Bridget Fonda in her last film before retiring from the screen), who start out wanting to be on the up-and-up, are at risk of succumbing to the lure of unexpected wealth. This makes the film on one hand an exploration of ethical behavior and on another a thriller full of menace and surprise. While I couldn’t warm up to any of the characters, Thornton’s performance alone makes it worth a viewing

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 90%; audiences: 81%.

Nightmare Alley
Guillermo Del Toro’s 2021 remake of the 1947 noir classic, which starred Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, and Colleen Gray, was the sixth and final film in our neo-noir class (trailer). The acting in the new version can’t be faulted, with stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett [wearing a LOT of red lipstick], Toni Collette, and Rooney Mara, along with Willem Dafoe, David Strathairn, and Richard Jenkins. They all do a great job.

\Cooper plays charming, ambitious Stanton Carlisle, who’s apparently just killed his father and is looking for a fresh start in life. He finds work doing odd jobs for a seedy traveling carnival. The movie is set in 1939, and the carnival includes all the cheesy acts and mysterious biological specimens in jars that you can imagine.

Carlisle observes the system that the show’s mentalist uses to “read the minds” of the patrons and eventually goes on the road with his partner Molly to do the same work wearing a tuxedo at high-class nightclubs. Disaster is inevitable.

The remake (2h, 30 m) adds all the content about the father, whereas the 1947 version (1h, 51m) added an upbeat closing scene to assuage producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s concerns about commercial potential. Both versions were based on a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 80%; audiences 68%.

Our Class
The neo-noir film class was a Princeton Adult School program, taught by Mark Schwartzberg, who holds a PhD in English literature from NYU, and much of his research has been in film studies. He’s taught at the high school and college levels in New York and New Jersey, and many film classes at the Adult School. His—and several of our fellow students’—knowledge about film, including the gossipy bits, is encyclopedic. A real pleasure!

Cumberbatch or Brett? Brett or Cumberbatch? Or Rathbone?

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This series of posts about the stories in the recent collection, Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, edited by Richard T. Ryan, published by Belanger Books, began by asking the story authors—and you, our Facebook friends—which is your favorite on-screen Holmes/Watson duo? I learned two things: Holmes fans have clear favorites, and their views are strongly held!

I started recording your votes on a small notepad and was soon using both sides of the sheet.

Garnering the most fans (about a third of the total) was the classic 36-episode Granada television series (1984-1994) starring Jeremy Brett, with equal votes to the Watsons of first David Burke, then Edward Hardwicke. Of course, fans did note Brett’s deteriorating performance as the series wore on, due to a series of psychological and medical problems.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman also garnered quite a few votes for the BBC Sherlock series—about a quarter of the total. People said they liked the modern energy of these productions, but I was disappointed to learn (thank you, gossip trade) that the two actors actually don’t like each other. Cumberbatch is the better known, of course, but, in a complete aside, if you want to see Freeman in one of my favorite short comedic films, The Voorman Problem, I think you’ll enjoy it.

There were almost as many votes for Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as for Cumberbatch and Freeman. Still, fans couldn’t help but scoff at the poor characterization of Watson. I suspect it wasn’t Bruce’s fault; he was probably hewing to the instructions of the director, who may have feared audiences wouldn’t understand how smart Holmes was without a dim Watson for contrast.

From here, we get into small numbers, five percent of the voting or so, but what’s surprising is how many portrayals loom so memorably in our minds! Downey and Law, Miller and Liu (with lots of pushback on this one. A bridge too far for some), Caine and Kingsley (Without a Clue), Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford (first American series, 1954), Peter Cushing and André Morell (The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959), Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin (Soviet television, 1979-1986). I’ve never seen most of these—or heard of some of them!

And, finally, some respondents thought “on-screen” portrayals was altogether too limiting a construct and proposed Sir Kenneth Macmillan’s performance of both Holmes and Moriarty in the ballet The Great Detective (1953), or the Clive Merrison and Michael Williams BBC Radio versions (1989-1998), and William Gillette, who portrayed Holmes on stage and in a 1916 silent film. And the very favorite depiction for one Holmes fan was the portrayal created in his own book. No one mentioned the various musical versions, probably for good reason.

Contemporary writers, who, in the case of the anthology mentioned, do adhere closely to the canonical conventions, have enthusiastically created adventures to fill in the time gap in which almost none of Conan Doyle’s stories are set and the hundreds of film, television, radio, stage, and other portrayals of these enduring characters show there are many stories still to be had. Or, as Holmes himself said, “One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature.” And contemporary writers continue to explore those limits. Enjoy!

Oscar Shorts are Back: Documentaries

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Here are the five short documentary nominees for Oscars this year. Altogether they are a nice mix, all different, yet interesting on their own considerable merits. A jumbo bowl of popcorn is needed here.

Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó (US) – These two irrepressible Chinese women are the grandmothers of filmmaker Sean Wang. There’s not a lot of story here, but seeing these two women in action, staying active, minds sharp, sense of humor intact, is a treat. Wài Pó is in her mid-eighties and says she feels like she’s twenty; Nǎi Nai is in her mid-nineties and says she feels like she’s a hundred. They are not related by blood, but by the marriage of their children and live together, keeping each other very much on their toes (trailer).

The ABCs of Book Banning (US) – There’s no question about where director Sheil Nevins stands on this issue, but her team taken the interesting tack of asking kids themselves (an astonishingly articulate group of Florida readers, mostly ages 9-11) what they think. Quotes are included from some of the more than 2000 books removed from school shelves and, while they may not represent the content the banners were objecting to, they certainly suggest the book’s message. It’s obvious the children don’t understand these efforts to deny them knowledge. In the words of one of the children. “Why?” Oh, and their biggest champion? A 101-year-old woman! (trailer).

Island in Between (Taiwan) – Director S. Leo Chiang has created a troubled poem about Taiwan, its future, and, in particular, the Taiwanese islands of Kin Men (Quemoy), perilously close to the Chinese mainland, which of course claims Taiwan is one of its provinces. His three passports—US, Taiwanese, and special permit for Kinmen—symbolize how torn he is about where he actually fits (stream).

The Barber of Little Rock (US) – John Hoffman and Christine Turner follow Arlo Washington on his rounds in the Arkansas capitol. He is a barber, he runs a barber school (which has trained more than a thousand mostly young men, mostly Black for what can become a solid career. Troubled by the wealth gap between Little Rock’s Black and white communities and the difficulties Blacks have obtaining loans to start businesses, and so on, he started a nonprofit community bank. Note that 95 percent of the recipients of his loans have repaid them (stream).

The Last Repair Shop (US) – This is the real “feel-good” documentary of the bunch. The Los Angeles Unified School District still maintains its program of giving musical instruments to students who want to participate in band or orchestra programs. These old instruments have been through many hands and keys stick, wood cracks, welds break. Four people (one each for stringed instruments, brass instruments, woodwinds, and pianos) repair and tune the instruments so that no child is denied the joy of making music. These four people themselves have fascinating and difficult histories so that, at a very personal level, they recognize how important these instruments are, a pathway to fitting in (stream).

Oscar Shorts Are Back: Live Action

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Academy Award, Oscar

Oscar Shorts are Back!

This year’s nominees for best live action shorts are playing in theaters. This year’s nominees seemed to trend a little longer than usual overall Only one was under 20 minutes, and the longest was 37 minutes (total, 2.5 hours). I’ll write about the Oscar-nominated short documentaries tomorrow. 

Invincible (US) – directed by Vincent Rene-Lortie. Based on a true story of a 14-year-old boy whose behavior problems have separated him from a loving family. The staff of the facility where he lives is trying to work with him, but neither they nor his family influences the choices he makes (trailer).

Knight of Fortune (Denmark) – directed by Lasse Lyskjaer Noer, Knight of Fortune tells how, Karl (played by Leif Andrée), in a visit to the morgue to view the body of his long-time wife, finds he cannot bring himself to open her coffin. An unlikely alliance between Karl and another widower, Torben (Jens Jørn Spottag), helps him face her death. Though the overall tone is bittersweet, there are darkly humorous moments and a strong sense of shared humanity (trailer).

Red, White and Blue (US) – directed by Nazrin Choudhury. A positive pregnancy test forces a single mother of two (played by Brittany Snow), working as a waitress and living paycheck-to-paycheck to make difficult decisions, as she and her ten-year-old daughter go on a road trip across several states in search of an abortion (trailer).

The After (UK) – Misan Harriman directed. Acclaimed British actor David Oyelowo plays a London man who must try to rebuild his life after a devastating street assault. Taking a job as a taxi driver, he meets all sorts, but cannot outrun his trauma (trailer).

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (UK/US) – Wes Anderson’s version of the Roald Dahl short story about a wealthy Englishman (Benedict Cumberbatch) who learns a Guru’s way “to see without his eyes,” so that he can cheat at blackjack. Also in the cast: Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade. With its big-budget production values and stellar cast, it’s quite an oddball (as is anything Wes Anderson produces) in this collection, which is more typically where up-and-coming filmmakers with limited budgets cut their teeth (trailer).

Our local moviehouse shows the shorts on three nights (live action, animated, documentary). See the schedule for your area, and get tickets from Shorts TV here. Some may be available on YouTube too.

Who’s the Best Holmes and Watson On-Screen?

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I asked this question of a certain kind of Sherlock Holmes expert: people who write stories in the Conan Doyle tradition. Quite a few contemporary writers take inspiration from Victorian England, Holmes’s wide-ranging if idiosyncratic erudition, and Watson’s genial writing style. I’ve had three such stories published and can attest to how much fun it is to don another writer’s hounds tooth suit.

The writers whose picks for best on-screen Holmes/Watson portrayals all appear in Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885, published last December by Belanger Books. Many of them have written a number of Doyle pastiches, and in the coming weeks, I’ll say more about why and how. They’ve generously shared their love of Holmesiana with me—and now you. *=one vote

*Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce
The 14 Hollywood films in this series are the classic of classics, released between 1939 and 1946, and the vehicle by which Americans first developed a relationship with an on-screen Holmes and Watson. Thus, “for tradition’s sake, maybe Rathbone-Bruce have the edge,” says author Hassan Akram. My own quibble with this series are well put by David Marcum, who says, “Basil Rathbone would be my favorite Holmes if he wasn’t saddled with Boobus Brittanicus Nigel Bruce, who was not Watson.” If you’ve seen the Rathbone/Bruce Hound of the Baskervilles [1939], you’ll know what he means.

***Jeremy Brett/David Burke/Edward Harwicke
In this Granada Television series, which over its 41 episodes (1984 – 1994) involved two actors in the Watson role, is the favorite of DJ Tyrer. “Not only does Jeremy Brett fit very closely to how I imagine Holmes,” he says, “but the series is a faithful adaptation, adding to the illusion.” George Gardner also favored this series, noting Watson’s direct voice and Brett’s “manic edge.” When he was writing, “it was Jeremy Brett’s Holmes that I saw.” Author Shelby Phoenix couldn’t be clearer: “It’s Jeremy Brett and David Burke all the way.” David Marcum takes exception. He says, Brett “did not play Holmes—he played himself, foisting his own physical and mental illnesses on the character.” (Brett took lithium to control his bipolar disorder, and the medication affected his health and appearance.)

**Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law
George Jacobs admits to missing the classic duos and to admiring the films featuring Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law from 2009 and 2011 (directed by Guy Ritchie ). Their “modern take” also appeals to Gustavo Bondoni, and Shelby Phoenix calls them “an iconic version.”

**Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman
This four-season BBC series (airing 2010-2017) is a tight runner-up for author Hassan Akram, and Kevin Thornton says Cumberbatch is “The only [Holmes] who has energized me enough in the last twenty years to sit and watch him,” suggesting an interesting tension between historical and contemporary influences in his creative process! The tabloids suggest the series would have gone on longer if the two stars had gotten along. It’s my current favorite, too, admitting great admiration for Martin Freeman. Interestingly, the producers image of Holmes was as a “high functioning sociopath.”

*Johnny Lee Miller/Lucy Liu
Here’s an unconventional choice. George Jacobs, who admits to missing the classics, found that the CBS series, Elementary, with 154 episodes that aired from 2012 to 2019, “had the best friendship chemistry and kept Holmes’s demons without losing his intrinsic goodness.”

Extra Credit
David Marcum provides a handy list of the many other actors who he believes have successfully played the Great Detective: Arthur Wontner (in a 1930s film series, set in the 30s), Ronald Howard (1954), Douglas Wilmer (in a 1964 – 1965 BBC series), Peter Cushing (a continuation of the BBCseries, airing in 1968), and Ian Richardson (1983). That Holmes has appeared in so many notable productions is irrefutable evidence of his lasting appeal.

So, who’s your favorite?

Photo of Benedict Cumberbatch by Fat Les, cc by 2.0 license.

Top-Notch Espionage Movies? Ask A Spy

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Former CIA operations officer Mark Davidson is writing the new column, “Chalk Marks,” for the national security news outlet, The Cipher Brief. The column will explore his interest in the intersection of intelligence and espionage with literature, film and popular culture, and it promises to be quite entertaining.

His first posting responds to a frequent question he receives: “What is the best spy movie?” Of course, he acknowledges up front that the quality of the film has nothing to do with how realistic it is. He says, “I love the Mission Impossible films, but they are about as reflective of life in the clandestine service as Hogwarts is to boarding school.”

When it comes to realism, though, he has a solid recommendation from the Cold War era, which he believes strongly was the golden age of espionage—the John Le Carré/George Smiley era—a time when he says tradecraft and counterintelligence mattered most. He suggests:

The Good Shepherd (2006), directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon and a bunch of stars (trailer). While the film may be a little history-heavy (it ends in the early 1960s), it portrays “tradecraft, mindset and minutiae at a level that few films have ever attempted.” As a writer of stories, I find “mindset” vitally important. How would a character act in this particular situation? When a story gets it right, we barely notice; when it gets it wrong, we say, “they’d never do that!”

Hallmarks of this film are tradecraft, atmosphere, and how little things contribute to success or disaster. If you’ve watched Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, about disgraced MI5 agents, you’ve seen the importance of minutia again. Sometimes the complexity of the agent’s task is revealed by its going wrong. Davidson says, “The Good Shepherd is among the best at revealing the fine line between adrenaline and stress and the precipice between success and compromise that CIA officers experience every day, and how difficult it can be to know if you are winning or losing.”

In multiple scenes, Damon’s character works with CIA experts to tease information out of the unfathomable: analyzing a murky photo or sharpening a muffled recording. Davidson considers these scenes a rare and penetrating look at this vital aspect of the work. Of course 2020 technology has 1960s methods beat, but how analysts can patiently decode a less-than-optimal image or sound file “is breathtaking and the value, immeasurable.”

Davidson also appreciates the subtlety of some of the tradecraft. Signals are a good example. “An effective signal is seen only by the person it’s intended for; anyone beyond that is a problem.” He predicts that viewers will miss some of the ops acts in The Good Shepherd, at least the first time they see the film. “I missed several, and I did this stuff for a lot of years,” he says. All part of the fun!

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Don’t Miss Jan Vermeer on the Big Screen!

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Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition (trailer) is an Exhibition on Screen film by David Bickerstaff that may flit through your community—catch it while you can. It showcases the once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of the paintings of Jan Vermeer currently on view at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. A great many American art lovers planned a trip across the Atlantic to see it. A great many more were disappointed, because tickets to the exhibit’s four-month run sold out within days.

The film shows you all 28 paintings in the show and is packed full of interesting details about the life and times and the artistic accomplishments of the painter. It leads off with two of his landscapes, and you don’t see any evidence of growing mastery as time wears on. It’s as if he was a genius from the first moment he picked up a brush. Maybe he burned all his early work, who knows?, but there are only 34 (Wikipedia) or 35 (film website) surviving Vermeer paintings. This is the largest assemblage of them, ever.

The commentary by art experts is engaging and adds a great deal to the film. They talk about the lack of brush strokes, the yellow fur-trimmed coat you see in five different paintings, he frequency of (different) maps in his backgrounds, the light blue outline on the back edge of the jacket in “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.” (You probably won’t actually see it in the photo above; the big screen gives you that detail. What you may notice is a bit of vibration against the background. It’s an optical effect.). What struck me is how the subjects look as if they might turn and speak to you at any moment. I think it’s the slightly parted lips on many of them that cause them to appear actually breathing.

Of course, seeing the paintings in person would be an unforgettable thrill, but on the big screen, you get a much closer view than you might in person! Without the jet-lag. And no crowds.

Find a screening near you. (Be sure to select your country.)

Oscar Shorts: Documentaries

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Oscar, Academy Awards

The themes of the Academy Award nominees for short documentary films are universal—parents and children, of whatever species, coming to recognize what’s right, care for the world around us. Three are from US directors, one set in Russia is a UK entry, and one from India.

How Do You Measure a Year? (trailer) – American director Jay Rosenblatt answers that question by following the relationship of a father and daughter as she grows from a toddler to a young woman. The father made home movies every year on her birthday that recorded her answers to the same set of questions. Spoiler alert: Asked at age three what she wanted to do when she grew up, the answer was “wear makeup and chew gum.”

The Elephant Whisperers (trailer)– directed by Kartiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga. In this beautiful nature documentary, a couple in south India takes on the formidable task of caring for an orphaned baby elephant they call Raghu—“a tender and hopeful product.” [Not based on the book, The Elephant Whisperer, set in Africa; and not the same as the movie Elephant Whisperer, set in Thailand.] (You can see it here)

Stranger at the Gate (trailer) – Directed by Joshua Seftel. A returned Marine with PTSD planned to attack Afghan refugees at their Muncie, Indiana, community center and mosque. But fate and faith had a different plan for him, and again, it was a daughter’s influence that mattered. This one was my favorite. (See the whole thing here)

Haulout (trailer) – The UK’s entry, directed by siblings Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev. In the desolation of the Siberian Arctic, marine biologist Maxim Chakilev is waiting to observe the annual migration of the walrus population. He makes the melancholy discovery that warming sea temperatures are forcing the walruses to swim the entire distance, with no ice to rest on, much to their detriment. Have you ever seen 90,000 walruses at one time? Now you can! Just be grateful Hollywood never perfected Smell-O-Vision. (see the whole thing here).

The Martha Mitchell Effect (trailer) – Directed by Anne Alvergue and Beth Levison – Martha was the outspoken wife of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell. She didn’t like what she saw of that administration’s illegal activities with Watergate and said so. They tried to silence her, claiming she was an alcoholic, mentally unstable, and generally damaging her reputation. (But, as Woody Allen once said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s following you.”) (You can see it here)