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.

In the John Wayne Western from 1944, Tall in the Saddle, land seizures are interrupted when a man threatens to tell the authorities about the sell of marked playing cards.  The man, never shown, is killed.  John Wayne plays the newly hired worker and good shot who, naturally, discovers the truth.

Wayne plainly attracts the haters here, including an insufferable biddy.  A saucy cowgirl (Ella Raines) believes Wayne has made a fool of her, and she intends to fire him from his ranch job, but—aw—she becomes infatuated with him.  There is a pleasing little moment in Saddle when a fellow female looker, Raines’s competition, praises the cowgirl’s prettiness and Raines gives a verbal indication that she knows about her looks and intends to use them to her advantage.

Tall in the Saddle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Director Edwin L. Marin‘s movie is a fun romp in which Wayne’s character is refreshingly less contemptuous of certain people than some other Wayne characters.  The cast is not wholly effective but it comes close, especially with the admirable fire of Ward Bond and Miss Raines.

I saw the Howard Hawks film, Ceiling Zero (1936)—or let me say I saw a particular print of it—on YouTube.  It was the best I could do since the pic was never released on DVD.

Director Hawks did even better with airline workers in Zero than he did, years later, with cowboys in Red River.  He organizes his scenes of active crews admirably, although this is in truth scriptwriter Frank Wead‘s show, for he adapted his own play.

Aviation technology of the Thirties is (to me) fascinating, and here we get that as well as a surprising amount of aircraft destruction.  And death.  There is no happy ending.  Still, I was happy to be seeing the forgotten Ceiling Zero.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) is an adventure yarn with Theodore Roosevelt (Brian Keith) as one of the chief characters.  If director-writer John Milius admires Roosevelt, as I have read, why did he fail to make him a serious man?  Keith’s performance is fine; Milius’s writing is not.  It turns ludicrous.

Wind also stars Sean Connery (good) and Candice Bergen (bad).  Appearing as well is John Huston, whose presence produced in me the desire to see The Man Who Would Be King, for it’s a much better period piece than this.

Cover of The Wind and the Lion

Thomas Vinterberg‘s film of the Hardy novel, Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), is about the occurrence of discovery—discovery of  another’s romantic interest, of responsibility, of sexual pleasure, of heartache.  The first hour and the last few moments, the coda, of the film are compelling; the rest of it is too hurried, with short shrift given where it should not be given.  In addition, main character Bathsheba Everdeen doesn’t seem entirely human because of course she is a nineteenth century proto-feminist.

Carey Mulligan, who plays her, never does anything surprising but is interesting in the role nonetheless.  Even stronger are Michael Sheen and Matthias Schoenaerts.  There is no greatness in Madding Crowd, as there is in a period piece like 1973’s The Emigrants.  I believe it to be a failure, but a very watchable failure—a near-success, in fact.