I find Sydney Sweeney a delightfully fine actress—un-showy and versatile—in the sensationalistic Euphoria show and The Handmaid. I prefer her to the conventional Zendaya and Alexa Demie, Rue and Maddy respectively on Euphoria. In the future, I want to see her working out of a role and not that of an AI figure. With AI there is nothing to praise. Legislators may need to protect the acting profession (that is, acting per se) from Anthropic, etc. And, after all, successful pro actors generally contribute a lot to the government’s revenue fund.
Dean Martin and Ann-Margret.
Together they are very winning, albeit Ann-Margret on her own is winning enough. In Murderers’ Row (1966) she does all she can with a cardboard part (which is a lot) and has never looked more drop-dead gorgeous. But of course Martin is handsome, and he gets all the funny one-liners in this seriocomic secret-agent pic which practically drops the “serio” for the comic. Also, unlike in The Wrecking Crew, he does okay as Matt Helm.
An example of the humor: In Cote d’Azur, Helm pleads with French police not to shoot at his moving car because an innocent girl passenger (Ann-Margret) is riding with him. After the police shoot anyway, Helm murmurs, “That’s the French for you. They don’t think any girl is innocent.”
Directed by Henry Levin, the movie is dopey but also pleasurable. Before she appeared in Downhill Racer, beautiful Camilla Sparv was in Row, but has pronouncedly little to do. Karl Malden is an intriguing villain. To sum it up, it’s nice to have Martin at the Helm here as well as all the other beguiling performers.
(All the reviews are by Earl Dean)
The 1977 Russian film The Ascent opens with some remarkable snowy weather images, provided by female director Larisa Shepitko, before advancing its war story. A while later, there is a stunning scene wherein one soldier, Rybak, crawls and pushes along in the snow another soldier, the wounded Sotnikov, until the latter begins to resemble a veritable snowman. Shepitko, who died in 1979 at age 41, was a gifted cinematic artist. With Yuri Klepikov she wrote the movie’s script and filmed it wisely and resoundingly. Through medium-long shots, she shows from behind a group of individuals plodding up a hill in cold, dry weather before they espy five hanging nooses: German soldiers intend to execute Russians.
The Ascent‘s themes include sacrifice, Christ-like, on the one hand, diminishment on the other. Indeed, Sotnikov is a Christ who is not a Christ while Rybak is a Judas who is not a Judas. Another theme is a mother’s anguish when death looms, for the mother. It is a grave achievement that really works on the emotions, one of the notable artistic movies of the Seventies.
(In Russian with English subtitles)
Written by JP Miller, Days of Wine and Roses (1958) was a Playhouse 90 TV movie before it was remade as a theatrical film. Though technically crude, it is a memorably strong drama about the ruination of sought-after social mobility—and of people’s lives—by alcoholism. Joe and Kirsten are the broken hard drinkers. Without getting drunk, Kirsten can only see the world as a “dirty” place, and is the more vulnerable and myopic of the two.
JP Miller (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The picture was well directed by John Frankenheimer. Cliff Robertson is a natural for the part of Joe. His acting is nigh effortless, whereas with Piper Laurie (Kirsten) we do see the effort. Laurie is inconsistently convincing, but—interestingly—she does manage to be deep. A psyche is there. . .
I’m glad I finally saw Days (on DVD) after all these years, and, yep, I’m sticking with the original.
Predictably, the hit movie Spy Kids spawned a sequel, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002), both directed by Robert Rodriguez. It’s another techno-fantasy for the entire family, featuring Carmen (Alexa Vega) and Juni (Daryl Sabara), spy kids employed by the OSS, which, as you know, eventually became the CIA.
Er, wait a minute—the OSS in Spy Kids 2 is fictional; it isn’t the CIA. Okay, but there is still a mission here, now that a highly destructive device has been stolen and is located on a now oddball island. A scientist there (Steve Buscemi) is given to both miniaturizing animals and creating hybrid animals which, however droll, grow to deluxe size. (Not good.) For good measure, Carmen and Juni confront rivals in fellow spy kids Gary and Gerti Giggles, capable of outdoing our child heroes but also facing a disadvantage. They get their faces soiled with camel manure and their father (Mike Judge) turns out to be an appalling traitor and would-be murderer. When he protests over how things are going, his daughter Gerti, disgusted with him, says, “Don’t even start, Dad!”
I’m glad Rodriguez started the Spy Kids trilogy. In addition to having an entertaining cast, SK2 is comically rich and visually endearing. And, thankfully, it has nothing to say.