In I Wake Up Screaming (1941) a model called Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis) gets murdered, and the investigating police department is pretty inept about the matter.  It allows big Ed Cornell (Laird Cregar) to do some very shoddy police work, for he tries to pin the murder on Victor Mature‘s Frankie, a dubious suspect.  He cares not a whit about other suspects. . . This flick by director Bruce Humberstone was the first film noir from Twentieth Century Fox, and though forgettable it’s watchable.  Mature is paired with Betty Grable, as Vicky’s sister, with an appealing housewife’s beauty and a performance not much different from that of any other old-time Hollywood actress.  It’s standard issue.  She is, at any rate, interesting, unlike Carole Landis, who is interesting only in her looks.

Adapted from a novel by Steve Fisher, Screaming was well handled by screenwriter Dwight Taylor.  Humberstone and his actors respect what a distinctly masculine affair it all is, and, really, nobody is even shedding tears over poor Vicky’s terrible death.  For her part, Grable’s character is too busy falling in love.

A short silent film about a big-city poor girl, who becomes well-to-do, in Russia, A Child of the Big City (1914) was made several years before the Bolshevik revolution and the vile slaughter of the royal family.

It presents pre-Soviet Russia, with urban activity and individual longings, and the impoverished chief character, Mary (Elena P. Smirnova), marries into wealth but proves to be a terrible human being.  She brings to the marriage, you see, some deplorable demotic ways, and her naive husband (Viktor Krawzow) is made miserable.  Sometimes it is only the thought of Mary’s earlier romantic affection that keeps him from shooting himself.

It is a sad (and apolitical) film crafted by the gifted Russian director, Yevgeni Bauer, whose execution is certifiably interesting and innovative despite some too-long scene takes.  Those takes are in themselves interesting, though.

2011’s Melancholia is the silliest pessimistic film I’ve ever seen.

That a stray planet is heading for a collision with the earth is acceptable—it’s merely the movie’s creator, Lars von Trier, lying like truth—but almost everything else in Melancholia is laughably crass.  Much of it is tedious too.  The film’s dialogue, which usually seems improvised, is terrible, and pretentiousness prevails as well.

Lead actor Kirsten Dunst agreed to get naked for this wreck, even if, happily, her acting is more effective than it has been in the past.  She’s plainly made the grade.

That multiple critics praised von Trier’s movie tells you something about the current state of film criticism.

Melancholia (2011 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The new Mexican movie, Lo mas sencille es complicarlo todo (2018) features English subtitles but not an English title.  Netflix, which picked it up, translates it as “The Simplest Thing Is To Complicate Everything”—not the simplest title.  No wonder the Spanish title was retained.

In its essence this comic item respects the honorable idea that teenagers and sexual intercourse don’t mix.  Then again, there is no intercourse in Sencille, not even between adults:  it’s largely a family film.  A conniving adolescent, Renata, is played by a stunning girl, Danna Paola; and she can act.  We sympathize with Renata because of her youth but that’s the only reason.  Not only does she subvert the love relationship between a beautiful blonde and the man Renata is crazy about, but she also insults people in her private speech.  She gets exactly what she deserves.

Goofy in its whimsicality, the film can be disappointingly hokey.  And it failed to make me laugh much.  Director Rene Bueno is not much of a scriptwriter.  Still, this would-be crowd pleaser works as a middlebrow, pop-arty entertainment.  It’s sprightly; it’s like The Bachelor on speed, except it’s sweet.  You could do worse with a Netflix film.

(In Spanish with English subtitles)

A July 12 article for The Federalist website is titled, “How Expanding Medicaid To Able-Bodied Adults Is Stripping Care For Disabled People.”  Penned by Charlie Katebi, it informs us that “When a state expands Medicaid, the federal government covers 95 percent of the cost of treating every able-bodied patient.  However, the federal government only covers 30 to 50 percent of the cost of treating Medicaid’s sicker patient populations.”

In large measure the federal government is a disgrace, and Medicaid ought to be abolished.  This is true even if Katebi’s information is false, and I have no reason to hold that it is.  Medicare, as I’ve written, insolvent by 2026?  When will Medicaid be insolvent?  “Not for a very long time,” a supporter might say.  Oh?  Well, I guess that’s true if only 30 to 50 percent of the care costs for the very sick are being covered.  But perhaps it isn’t true.

Surely the provision of a Universal Basic Income (a phrase I dislike) would be better than this, as long as Medicaid was phased out slowly.  And it would still be necessary to have government inspections of nursing homes and hospice centers.  Anyone who says regarding today’s welfare programs, “It ain’t broke so don’t fix it,” doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  He doesn’t mind insolvency being laid on waste and inefficiency.