As the Earth Turns (1938/2019)

AS THE EARTH TURNS  (1938/2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Richard Lyford
    Barbara Berger, Roger Bassett, Richard Lyford,
    Alan Hoelting, Patricia Cowan, Edwin C. Frost
Not to be confused with the long-running soap opera "As the World Turns", this one's a real cult item: a silent sci-fi movie shot in the Pacific Northwest on a severely limited budget in 1938 and finally released 80 years later at the Seattle International Film Festival. It's an impressive piece of work under the circumstances, like a home movie done in the style of a Flash Gordon serial, shot on 16mm by a filmmaker who at the time was just 19 years old. It's about an ambitious young reporter (Barbara Berger) who sets out to write a story that will "rock the world," and ends up tracking down a mysterious figure called PAX (played by Lyford) who wants to rock the world himself, as a way to persuade humans to stop waging war. Comparisons to Orson Welles might be overstated, but Lyford clearly had an idea and an instinct for the medium, and you can tell he'd watched "Metropolis" a couple of times. He eventually went to work for Walt Disney. The restored version contains a new musical score by composer Ed Hartman.

Quote File / Take 17

Some lines from the movies of Max von Sydow:

"I've traveled too far and seen too much to ignore 
  the despair in the galaxy."

  Von Sydow in "Star Wars: 
                              Episode VII - The Force Awakens"

"Conscience is a terrible thing."

  Von Sydow in "The Night Visitor"

"I hate herbal tea almost as much as I hate honey."

  Von Sydow in "Minority Report"

"If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his 
  name, he'd never stop throwing up."

  Von Sydow in "Hannah and Her Sisters"

"There is no cause. There's only yourself. The belief 
  in your own precision."

  Von Sydow in "Three Days of the Condor"

"Elevator to hell. Going up."

  Von Sydow in "What Dreams May Come"

First Animation (2020)

FIRST ANIMATION  (2020)  € € € € €
    D: Siri
A brilliant little animated short in which a stick figure comes into a room, falls down and hides behind an easy chair. Sometimes the simplest things are the best, and this is one of those times. The movie lasts nine seconds. 

The Bees (1978)

THE BEES  (1978)  ¢ ¢
    D: Alfredo Zacharias
    John Saxon, Angel Tompkins, John Carradine,
    Claudio Brook, Alicia Encinas, Julio César Imbert
John Saxon, Angel Tompkins and a German-accented John Carradine take on an army of killer bees. The stars battle the script to a draw, but nobody can compete with the bees. Or as Carradine observes, "Zee bees, zay know everysing." It'd make sense to pay attention to the scientists in a situation like this, but do the politicians and corporate execs do that? Not in a movie like "The Bees". Sometimes not in the real world, either.

The Irishman (2019)

THE IRISHMAN  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Martin Scorsese
    Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino,
    Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale,
    Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba
In "The Irishman", the "GoodFellas" grow old, with Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran, a coldly efficient mob enforcer with a conflicted sense of loyalty to a pair of powerful mentors: crime boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino.) Scorsese made this for Netflix, which allows him to be expansive - the movie runs three and a half hours. That might be an hour longer than it needs to be, the CGI technology that's supposed to make the stars look younger isn't especially convincing, and it's pretty much devoid of sympathetic characters. De Niro plays Sheeran with the matter-of-factness of a guy who knows how the world works and knows his place in it. (He pays a hard personal price for that acceptance, but there's nothing he can do about that, either.) Pacino goes over the top yet again: It might be vintage Pacino, but it's not Jimmy Hoffa. The standout in the cast is Pesci as the capo who knows all the angles and knows how to play them. He's this movie's equivalent of Brando in "The Godfather": omniscient, self-assured and lethally understated. It's probably the best work of his career. Several times in the movie, Frank and Russell sit down together over a loaf of bread and a glass of wine. It's their personal sacrament, an act of communion, and the symbolism, in a Scorsese movie, is not accidental. Significantly, Sheeran never does that with Jimmy Hoffa.

Three Strangers (1946)

THREE STRANGERS  (1946)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jean Negulesco
    Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Geraldine Fitzgerald
There's a recurring theme that runs through much of John Huston's work, from "The Maltese Falcon" to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" to "The Man Who Would Be King" to "Moby Dick": the protagonist who sets out after some fabulous prize, becomes obsessed with it and ultimately achieves it, even as the quest itself destroys him. This movie, which Huston cowrote, is another riff on that, telling what happens to three shady characters who sign a pact to share the proceeds from a sweepstakes ticket. Be careful what you wish for, in other words. Lorre's outstanding as the film's resident fatalist, the only one of the three who understands from the start that the deck's stacked against all of them, no matter how the cards are played, and whose only ambition is to get drunk and stay that way till the hangman comes. According to noirmeister Eddie Muller, the role was intended for Humphrey Bogart, and it's not hard to imagine Bogart delivering Lorre's lines. 

Mary (2019)

MARY  (2019)  ¢ ¢
    D: Michael Goi
    Gary Oldman, Emily Mortimer, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo,
    Stefanie Scott, Chloe Perrin, Owen Teague
A family buys a ghost ship and sails it into the Bermuda Triangle. That sounds like a good idea, right? The framing device isn't especially believable (though Emily Mortimer acts convincingly crazy in it), and the ending's a disappointment, but some of the stuff on the boat is intense. The writer, Anthony Jaswinski, was responsible for "The Shallows" (2016), another terror-on-the-water thriller.