Benjamin Franklin (2022)

 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ken Burns

Take away his role in the American Revolution and Benjamin Franklin arguably would still be the key historical figure of the 18th century. He lived through most of it, for one thing. None of the other Founding Fathers could match Franklin's spectacular range of interests and accomplishments. Nobody except Jefferson even came close. And Franklin always seemed like the founder who had the most fun. That and his evolution from slave owner to abolitionist makes him an ideal subject for Ken Burns. Four hours is hardly enough time to do justice to Franklin, but it's enough to encapsulate some of what he did for folks who mainly know him as the face on the $100 bill. Without the use of photographs, which didn't exist in Franklin's time, Burns takes advantage of Franklin's work as a printer to help tell the story visually, with shots of press equipment and boxes of lead type, pages from the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanac, and what look like contemporary woodcuts, along with the usual portraits, etchings and shots of historic buildings where some of the events took place. How early American history might've turned out without him is hard to say, but there'd be no point in having an 18th century without Benjamin Franklin.

Benedetta (2021)

 

BENEDETTA  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Paul Verhoeven

    Virginie Efira, Daphne Patakia, Charlotte Rampling,

    Lambert Wilson, Louise Chevillotte, Olivier Rabourdin,

    Hervé Pierre, Clotilde Courau, David Clavel

A devout young girl enters a 17th-century convent and comes under the watchful eye of Mother Superior Charlotte Rampling. She grows up to be a devout young woman with a few issues, and this being a nunsploitation movie by Paul Verhoeven, things get weird. It's a virtual catalogue of everything you'd hope to see in a picture like this: torture, hysteria, sacrilege, full frontal nudity, lesbian sex, corruption, suicide, mob violence, flagellation, pestilence, burnings at the stake and the stigmata. All that's missing, really, is Eric Idle calling for the plague-cursed villagers to bring out their dead. Maybe that's in the director's cut.

Below the Sea (1933)

 

BELOW THE SEA  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Albert S. Rogell

    Ralph Bellamy, Fay Wray, Frederik Vogeding,

    Esther Howard, Paul Page, Trevor Bland

A grouchy sailor and a fun-loving amateur scientist meet up on an expedition to photograph marine life and (he hopes) find a wrecked German submarine and a fortune in gold. Old-style deep-sea adventure with Ralph Bellamy in a rare romantic lead. Released the same year Wray made "King Kong". 

Battle Beyond the Sun (1962)

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN  (1962)  ¢

    D: Thomas Colchart 

    Edd Perry, Aria Powell, Andy Stewart, Bruce Hunter 

Stilted Soviet science fiction, repackaged by Roger Corman and Francis Ford Coppola, about the race between two rival superpowers to see who can be the first to reach Mars. It's in color and it looks better than a lot of American sci-fi flicks of the period, but the storytelling really needs some work. Two monsters (created by Coppola) do appear eventually, but it's too dark to see very much, except that one of them looks suspiciously like a giant vagina with a mean disposition and razor-sharp teeth. Don't worry, though. Even that won't keep you awake. The original Soviet cut, called "Nebo Zovyot" and missing the lethal genitalia, came out in 1959.

Bathory (2008)

 

BATHORY  (2008)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Juraj Jakubisko

    Anna Friel, Karel Roden, Hans Matheson,

    Vincent Regan, Deana Horvátková, Franco Nero

Starting in the late 16th century and in the middle of an unending war, a Hungarian countess fights tooth and claw to defend her land, her family and her religion. And she never seems to age. Could that be because she's a vampire and bathes in human blood? According to legend, the real Elizabeth Bathory had a capacity for murder rivalled only by Vlad the Impaler. According to this movie, she was set up by a jilted suitor who maliciously defamed her. It's hard to know what's real at this point, and with some of the story's key figures dabbling in hallucinogens, who knows? The movie's nicely shot (in Slovakia), but without some historical knowledge, the story's a little hard to track, the running time (141 minutes) feels awfully long, and the quest to rehabilitate Bathory's reputation sharply limits any potential for serious neck biting.

Back From Eternity (1956)

 

BACK FROM ETERNITY  (1956)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: John Farrow

    Robert Ryan, Anita Ekberg, Rod Steiger, 

    Phyllis Kirk, Keith Andes, Gene Barry, 

    Fred Clark, Beulah Bondi, Jesse White,

    Cameron Prud'Homme, Jon Provost

When a small plane crashes in the jungle, it's up to the passengers to band together to survive, repair the engine and the broken propeller, and get out of there before the headhunters close in. An old-fashioned adventure yarn covering most of the formula bases, and one of the last movies produced by RKO. A remake of "Five Came Back" (1939), also directed by John Farrow.

All Quiet On the Western Front (2022)

 

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT  

    D: Edward Berger                    (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl,

    Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic

This is like the German equivalent of "1917", following a grunt soldier though the gas, mud, squalor and gore of the First World War. Like the American Civil War, World War One was a conflict in which traditional battlefield tactics were no match for advanced weaponry, men still attacking on foot over open ground in the face of artillery, machine guns, tanks and planes: a pointless exercise in wholesale slaughter. The camera doesn't turn away from any of that, even when you maybe wish it would. The musical score is jarring, and when the actors play dead, in shots that seem to go on for eons, they really look dead. The dead are the lucky ones. Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

Archangel (2005)

 

ARCHANGEL  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jon Jones

    Daniel Craig, Yekatarina Rednikova, Gabriel Macht,

    Lev Prygunov, Alexey Diakov, Harry Ditson,

    Kaspars Zvigulis, Valery Chernyak, Avtandil Makharadze

A history professor attending a conference in Moscow gets caught up in a murder investigation and a mystery dating back to the last days of Josef Stalin. Daniel Craig plays the academic, but this guy's no James Bond. When he and a  journalist played by Gabriel Macht are cornered and an evil guy orders them to dance, they dance. A diverting bit of escape made for the BBC, shot on location in Moscow and Latvia and based on a novel by Robert Harris. If you're somebody who misses the old Soviet Union and thinks the second coming of Stalin could signal a return to the good old days, this might be the movie for you.

After the Fox (1966)

AFTER THE FOX  (1966)  ¢ ¢

    D: Vittorio De Sica

    Peter Sellers, Victor Mature, Britt Ekland, Martin Balsam,

    Akim Tamiroff, Maurice Denham, Maria Grazia Buccella

A frantic but mostly unfunny caper comedy with Peter Sellers as a master criminal posing as a movie director while trying to intercept a shipment of stolen gold. Victor Mature, who never took himself too seriously, does a grinning self-parody. Burt Bacharach composed the music and the catchy title tune. Vittorio De Sica, directing, has a cameo playing himself. Neil Simon wrote the thing, but even he could fire a blank now and then, and this is one of those times. 

Quote File / Take 24

 

"Short answers save trouble."

  Timothée Chalamet in "Little Women"

"Pointing a camera is like pointing a gun."

  Patrick Bauchau in "Lisbon Story"

"There are no ghosts in daylight."

  Gabriel Byrne in "Gothic"

"People with guns get to do whatever they want."

  Denis Leary in "The Ref"

"Making movies is the most 

  wonderful thing in the world."

  Ian McKellen in "Gods and Monsters"

Spencer (2021)

 

SPENCER  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Pablo Larraín

    Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall, Sally Hawkins,

    Sean Harris, Jack Nielen, Freddie Spry,

    Jack Farthing, Laura Benson, Stella Gonet

Lady Diana Spencer, aka Princess Diana, spends the Christmas holidays at Sandringham, in the company of (and at odds with) Britain's compulsively straight-laced royal family. She's got her boys with her, and a couple of loyal retainers, and she's surrounded by people, but she's miserable, isolated, and a prisoner of stifling protocol. She's cracking up. There's not really much of a story in this, which leaves the movie squarely in the hands of Kristen Stewart as Diana. Her staccato line readings are hard to understand sometimes, which in an odd way fits a character who's alternately ignored or disdained by most of those around her. There are a few closeups toward the end where you recognize Kristen Stewart in there, but mostly what you're seeing is Diana. Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall and Sean Harris all get a nice moment or two as members of the household staff, but the stodgy, inflexible Windsors might as well be made out of cardboard. It's  a somewhat different look at the royals than the one you get with "The Crown".