A Room with a View (1985)

Second viewing; first viewed on March 27, 1987.

Based on the novel by E.M. Forster, first published in 1908.

Lucy is a young upper-class Englishwoman who is in Florence with her chaperone, as a tourist. At the boarding house where they are staying she meets several English people, including handsome George and his father, two middle-class tourists. One day, George kisses Lucy forcibly. Some time later, back in England, his father moves to near where she lives, and the young man comes to visit frequently. Meanwhile, Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil, an intellectual type from the same social class as she.

This is one of those films on which I differed so completely from everyone else that I just had to give it another chance. And, now that I did, I can say that, though I really was too harsh on it, I still differ from everyone else about it. There are some comic sequences, mostly involving character Charlotte, which are actually quite entertaining, I will give it that. But, all things taken into account, there is not enough to this movie to justify all the awe it inspired. Perhaps the novel, which I haven't read, would enlighten a few points, but, from what I gathered by watching the movie, there isn't much originality or consistence in the events woven by the screenwriter. Of course, characters are allowed to be contradictory and confused, but in this film they are just, well, too mysterious. At one point, George says that he, unlike Cecil, is able to respect a woman as a full human being, with wishes and thoughts of her own. But what we see is quite the opposite of that. George is impulsive, self-absorbed and even prone to forcing a woman to satisfy his wishes, whereas Cecil respectfully asks her before kissing her. As I said, perhaps such contradictions are part of the writer's design, but then again, I think this aspect should be a little more fully fleshed out (perhaps in the novel it is, but, as I said, I haven't read it, so I can't tell). Furthermore, the incredible coincidence which makes the plot possible is slightly annoying, and even more so is that the movie has the gall to deny it with the most feeble explanation. But these are mere examples. I guess the main point of the film is to contrast the sanguine and phlegmatic characters, with considerations about how they are influenced by the climate, and by social class. But it never transcends the level of cliché and, all things considered, makes for an unsatisfactory movie.

Rating: 46 (up from 30)

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Several storms rage the planet and bring about a new ice age. A paleoclimatologist must save his son who is trapped in the New York City Public Library with his friends.

Disaster movie whose plot does not seem to make sense -- I mean, why would a man travel by car and eventually by foot across a storm to send for air rescue when he knew the place where his son is and could have done it from where he was initially? Oh well, I guess people do not care any more about these insignificant details. The film is not completely unenjoyable -- there are some fine action set-pieces and the special effects are impressive.

Rating: 36

Love Story (1970)

Two college students begin a relationship. He wants to get into Law School and she wants to study music. He is from a wealthy WASP family; her ancestors are Italian immigrants. They fall in love and get married. His father does not approve of the marriage and disinherits him. They postpone children until after finishing University. She gets sick and dies at 25.

While not exactly the best film I ever saw, this film does not deserve some of the criticism it received. In the first place, there is nothing maudlin about it. It is quite the opposite of maudlin, actually, as it is told in a modern and dry style, and the "sad" parts go by quite faster than one would expect. Secondly, people have disparaged the film's catchphrase (spoken at two points in the movie) as silly or worse; well, I will not go into deep philosophical discussions here, but I am simply not so sure it is actually as silly as all that. I am not sure I can pinpoint anything that is necessarily wrong with this film. But this is as far as my defense of it will go; I guess I just don't think it is intellectually and emotionally stimulating enough. There are, nevertheless, one or two things that apparently escaped critics. The most conspicuous subtext that no one, to my notice, has talked about, is the religious one. The protagonists are self-defined atheists, and the author, who was a son and a grandson of rabbis, seems to be saying that, even if your wedding ceremony is a "do-it-yourself" one, chances are that your death ceremony will not be of that kind. Also of notice is how mothers are completely insignificant to the story, whereas fathers are quite the opposite. Needless to say, should the protagonist couple have had a child, that pattern would repeat itself, which I suppose makes God -- that greatest of all father figures, and an invisible and omnipresent character in the film -- a terrible monster who slays or annihilates all women. As for the musical score, I must differ on that regard from many reviewers, because Lai is a true god among composers and this is a superb score. For what it's worth, here goes a piece about a woman who allegedly served as an inspiration for the female protagonist:

The Very Jewish Love Story Behind Erich Segal's 'Love Story'

Rating: 51

Tristeza do Jeca (1960)

Some poor rural workers are manipulated by both sides in an election. The candidates focus especially on one of the workers, named Jeca, as he is considered to have some influence over the community. The son of one of the "colonels" feigns to court Jeca's daughter in order to obtain his support. The other side threatens to fire his workers if he does not win; later, he resorts to kidnapping.

This comedy tries to depict the Brazilian phenomenon of "coronelismo", in which a rich landowner, or "colonel", dominates politically a certain rural community. Voters are coaxed by various methods to vote on him. The most trivial of these methods is the buying of the vote through material benefits offered to the voter. In the film, more sophisticated ruses are employed as well. Although it suffers from a somewhat simple-minded plot, there are good things in this film. The picture of the workings of the Brazilian electoral system when the film was made is fairly accurate, and occasionally funny. Things have changed a bit in Brazil from that time to present days, but problems persist, in slightly modified shapes. 

Rating: 42

Three Violent People (1956)

After the American Civil War, a Confederate officer returns to his native Texas. He meets a woman on his way and marries her. She hides from him her past as a dance-hall girl. He is a cattle rancher. Cattle thieves and new tax laws are making it hard for him to keep his ranch. His brother, with whom he does not get along, has also returned.

The premise has some implausible points, most evident among them the marriage itself. The story has many points in common with other films of that period. One of them, The Naked Jungle, had the same male leading actor. Elephant Walk is another film with some plot similarities. The postwar context is an interesting one, and they make good use of it. Overall, a mildly interesting and mildly entertaining film which does not stray from Western conventions and stereotypes.

Rating: 39

Kóblic (2016)

Argentina, 1977. Kóblic is a Navy captain who worked as a plane pilot in the notorious "death flights", which dumped people suspect of political crimes into the sea. His personal opposition to those activities leads him to quit his position and hide in a small town, where he works as a crop duster for a local friend. The local police chief, who is a corrupt and violent man, soon becomes suspicious of him. To complicate things, he gets involved with a woman who is living with another violent man.

Although it is very well directed and well acted, there aren't many thrills in this somewhat implausible drama with a historical backdrop. Some people are being misled into taking it for a real story, which just comes to prove how prone to wishful thinking people are, even when there is no statement by the movie itself claiming its veracity. There isn't much of a chance that a real military would do what the protagonist here does, and the film itself is a sort of explanation for that. It would perhaps be different if he left the country. By staying in Argentina, he just demonstrates that small places are just political miniatures of big places, i.e., the whole country. Besides, most people who work for a dictatorship are ideologically in tune with all its aspects. Military men most of all, since their very training is a strong mental conditioner. I liked the way the movie turns into a revenge story in the final section, although the ending is not exactly a happy one.

Rating: 60

Man of the House (1995)

Jack moves in with his girlfriend, who is divorced and has a 11-year-old boy named Ben from her previous marriage. Ben does everything he can to scare away his prospective stepfather. Meanwhile, the latter, who is a Federal prosecutor, is being targeted for revenge by the son of a Mafia boss he sent to prison.

This is a very lame comedy, but there are occasional glimpses of what might have been a better movie, if all the ridiculous dances and all the moralistic sap were weeded out of it. The earlier part of the movie suggests a perversity which could turn into something interesting. One of the better comic points has a school kid being repeatedly locked inside a locker by bullies. At one point, he and Ben, who tried to help and suffered the same fate as he, talk from inside their respective lockers:

Kid #1: You know, it's not so bad in here. It's kind of peaceful.
Kid #2: Yeah, it's amazing how you get used to it after a while.

Another interesting point of the movie is how the three main ethnicities that formed the U.S.A. are represented in the movie. When Ben tells his school chum that he and his stepfather have joined an Indian Guides program and are going out on a camping tour, Ben's friend, who is black, comments:

Kid #3: I'll never understand why you white people like to sleep outside on the ground. You'll never catch no brothers doing that.

As this film was (apparently) made by whites only, it is only fair to include here the testimony of a black person:

We're Here. You Just Don't See Us

The Native American angle of the movie seems to imply that white people have no culture of their own on which to lean when it comes to restoring their familial wounds. It is ironic how whites would have wiped out most indigenous populations only to appropriate their culture for therapeutical purposes. But of course the movie will not come anywhere near such problematic points.

But, as I said, there is a good movie lurking somewhere inside Man of the House. The intertwining of the two subplots of Child vs. Stepfather and Thugs vs. Prosecutor is not a bad idea. The latter works most obviously as a catalyst for the resolution of the former, but in my opinion it goes beyond that. There is a psychoanalytic angle in which the thugs represent the stepson's unconscious murderous fantasies. Alternatively, or even concurrently, they represent the stepfather's fears concerning his stepson. But, again, to make it work it would be necessary to remake the movie and steer it in a new direction.

Rating: 30

Another Stakeout (1993)

A woman who is about to testify in the trial of a crime boss goes missing after some associates of the defendant blow up the house where she was hiding under police protection. Two cops and a woman from the D.A.'s office are assigned a stakeout on a house where two friends of the missing woman's are spending the summer.

A lame sequel which repeats some of the shortcomings of the first film and adds a lot more of its own. The implausibility factor is severely intensified, especially in the fact that a couple who is sheltering a hiding witness should be a lot more wary of neighbors, and more so when those neighbors behave and talk erratically. The attempts at humor, in this film, take a turn for the worse, and are for the most part strained and insipid. On the plus side, the cinematography is excellent, and the action sequences, though not as remarkable as those of the first film, are well done.

Rating: 33

Stakeout (1987)

Second viewing; first viewed on February 19, 1988.

After a prisoner escapes, the police sets up a stakeout on his girlfriend's house. One of the cops assigned to that job falls in love with the aforementioned woman, entailing a series of complications.

Entertaining blend of comedy, romantic drama, and action thriller. It is quite well made, too, and the sequence at the paper mill is a real tour de force. The plot, however, does not make room for much thinking on the part of the viewer. It is all very mechanic, and part of the thrills is simply a straightforward consequence of a combination of the complex premise and the behavior of the male protagonist, who is both imprudent and absent-minded, to a degree that could be considered unrealistic. I guess one could file it under easy viewing, which usually means also easy forgetting.

Rating: 60 (down from 67)

Bon Voyage! (1962)

A middle-class family, comprised of father, mother, two sons, and daughter, go on a vacation trip to France, by ship. Daughter meets a young man on the ship, and he follows her on land. Older Son becomes a bit of a womanizer. Father and Younger Son take a tour of the Paris sewers. At a party, Mother is harassed by a don juan. After Paris, they travel to Cannes. Daughter seems to have fallen in love with her new acquaintance, and he shows up at the beach, where they have a fight.

Upholding family values seems to be the underlying moral purpose of this film; it tries to do so in an entertaining way, and seems to have achieved its goal with audiences of its time. The script is hopelessly uninspired, but lack of inspiration did not seem to pose an obstacle for its extended -- more than 2 hours! -- length, and that in turn did not seem to scare away viewers. It is far from unwatchable, but equally far from exciting.

Rating: 33

Bloodline (1979)

The president of a pharmaceutical company is killed, and his daughter replaces him. The board of directors is comprised of members of the same family, who are all in need of quick money. They try to convince the new president to allow the company to go public. She refuses, and as a consequence is also targeted for murder.

The basic storyline is interesting, but the details of the plot are terribly lacking both in consistency and entertainment value. There is an underlying theme of ethnic bonds and how they become a source of problems which is also interesting, but its development is very superficial. A longer version of this film is said to exist but is nowhere to be found, apparently.

Rating: 20

Plaza Suite (1971)

Three stories around the theme of marriage. (1) A businessman and his wife camp out in a hotel room because their house is being painted; the wife also wants to make it a celebration of their wedding anniversary, but the event becomes the catalyst for the husband's coming out in the open about an affair. (2) A Hollywood producer is passing by New York City and sets a hotel date with an old girlfriend from his hometown, who is now a married woman. (3) A bride-to-be locks herself in a hotel bathroom on the day of her wedding which is to be held on that same hotel. Her parents struggle to take her out of there.

This segmented film presents three different angles of wedlock. The first segment features a woman in her forties, the second one a woman in her thirties, and in the third one she is in her twenties. It works as an analysis of different stages in womanhood and also as an assessment of marriage in different decades of the 20th century. The script sports a great domain of dramatic technique, but this comes at the expense of naturalism. Everything is greatly exaggerated, and the characters are as annoying as they come, more so than one would find in any real-life person. Each line of dialogue struggles to outsmart the previous one; sometimes they succeed, and some times they painfully do not. I suspect that may become a little exhasperating for some viewers. The happy ending is simply one of those things that come across at once as strained and inevitable.

Rating: 44

Freaky Friday (1976)

A teenage girl and her mother simultaneously wish they could "switch places" for just one day. Instantly, they switch bodies. As they both had some rather demanding events scheduled on that day, complications ensue.

This is what I might call an opportunistic movie. It envisages a situation and milks it for all it can give to the goal of achieving a respectable movie length. Sometimes, you get an interesting philosophical and moral essay on understanding the other's position. Other times, it aims at lower human urges, such as spying on someone close. As the film nears its end, the film is not interested in any of those things; it has evolved into an action comedy which profits from either character's inability to deal with certain physical tasks of their apparent selves. It even abandons consistency (in the reverse transformation) for the sake of prolonging the action. Much of the movie, however, just shows its two main characters adjusting to more trivial details of their bodily situation, like, for instance, addressing others in such a way that is consistent with it.

Rating: 45

The Pleasure of His Company (1961)

The arrival of an estranged father upsets the preparations for a young woman's wedding. He tries to envelop everyone around him in his charms -- his remarried ex-wife, his daughter, and even their house cook. The greatest concern of his ex-wife is that his sweet talk seems to be changing their daughter's mind about the big step she is about to take.

I found this film deeply infuriating as I started to watch it, mainly because its central character comes across to the viewer as not charming at all. It's quite a stretch to suppose any other character in the movie might think differently, but maybe I am wrong about this -- after all, they say that blood is thicker than water. Or maybe, rather than a genetic phenomenon, it has a sexual component to it -- an implication that women are somehow attracted to scoundrels. Well, make what you will of it, this is not a particularly entertaining movie. According to Wikipedia, the leading actor decided before this movie he was through dancing in the cinema, but they sure made him dance a lot in this movie. Of course, it was all in the story -- what I would call diegetic dancing -- so I guess this does not make him a vow breaker. It ends in the Casablanca tradition, with the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Rating: 40

Tsirk (1936)

English title: The Circus

A circus artist has a child from a black man, and is discriminated, and even physically threatened, because of it. She flees to Europe with a man she meets on a train, who will act as her impresario. In the Soviet Union, she performs at a circus and falls in love with a local performer. Her impresario gets violent toward her.

This film is a very simple melodrama with some circus numbers thrown in. It has a clear propagandistic slant, depicting America as a land of bigots and savages, and the USSR as a paradise of tolerance and freedom; it manages to be mendacious about both countries, of course. In the specific case of racial tolerance, it may be right about the USSR, I couldn't tell for sure. Not that it matters much. There was no significant black population there, and such welcoming messages as this one did not prompt all that many blacks to want to live there. But it is a watchable movie.

Rating: 32

G.I. Blues (1960)

The central concept on which this film's plot was based is not new, and was already present on the 1782 novel The Dangerous Liaisons, by Choderlos de Laclos. A closer source would be a 1933 play by Kenyon Nicholson and Charles Robinson named Sailor, Beware!, and  adapted to film three times before this one. No credit is given for those works, though.

A G.I. stationed in West Germany (presumably at around the same time when the film was released) has plans of starting his own nightclub once he returns to America. He places a bet on a fellow soldier who says he can spend the night with a certain German dancer. But that soldier gets transferred...

The musical numbers with the male lead are OK, and are satisfactorily tuned to the plot. There are also two nice solo dance numbers featuring the female lead. As for the script, it is painfully mild and uninspired.

Rating: 31

O vendedor de linguiças (1962)

Gustavo sells sausages which he carries around the city on his truck. He lives at the working-class periphery of São Paulo, in a neighborhood comprised mostly of immigrants of diverse origins. He has a wife, a son, and a daughter. Gustavo's daughter, named Flora, works as a housemaid at a posh house. When her employers go out on a vacation trip, she gets to be alone in their big house. She does not resist the temptation of borrowing some clothes from her employers. She meets a rich young man to whom she pretends to be rich.

Comedy whose initial section depicts an immigrant neighborhood in scenes which are close in style to Italian neo-realism. The middle section suffers from of a poorly thought-out plot, but if one is willing to suspend disbelief, it is possible to mildly enjoy the follow-up which shows, with a mix of comedy and drama, the cultural and economical disparities between social classes in Brazil.

Rating: 39

Jing wu men (1972)

English titles: Fist of Fury; The Chinese Connection; School for Chivalry

The master in a Chinese martial arts school in 1910s Shanghai dies suddenly of mysterious causes. A rival school run by the Japanese is suspected of having something to do with that death. Cheng, a former student at the Chinese school, returns after a long absence. His fiancee is also a student at the school. Cheng vows to find out what happened to his old master and avenge him if that should be the case.

Fight film which is very dull in the non-fighting parts. The poor script is centered aroung the oppression of Chinese people by the Japanese who controlled Shanghai. The drama taps into the viewer's weakness for conspiracy theories and revenge fantasies. According to some scientific studies, the Chinese have one of the highest I.Q.s in the world. The star of this movie was seven-eighths Chinese and one-eighth Ashkenazi Jewish. His I.Q. must have been high indeed as, according to the same aforementioned scientific studies, the Ashkenazis' I.Q. is even higher than the Chinese's. But this film is surely aimed at people with I.Q.s lower than that.

Rating: 17

Casinha pequenina (1963)

A rural property in 19th-century Brazil is run with iron hand by its owner and his foreman (appropriately nicknamed Iron Fist). A peasant who works for the land owner (possibly as a sharecropper) frequently intercedes in favor of the property's slaves, who are frequently whipped and tied to a pole. The owner has a dark secret in his past and is being blackmailed by a woman.

Terrible melodrama, with an absurd plot, and overall deficient production values, though the cinematography is good, and so is the musical score. The main actor has an interesting screen persona, which makes the movie a little less unbearable to watch. Also, the first section of the movie is slightly better than the rest and has some interesting sequences depicting rural slavery in Brazil, albeit in a melodramatic way.

Rating: 26

Fun in Acapulco (1963)

A young American living in Mexico suffers from post-traumatic disorder. He sees an opportunity for self-treatment when he lands a job as a lifeguard at a hotel pool.

This musical drama is extremely gorgeous-looking. This somehow justifies it, but its main commercial appeal was probably the magnetism which its male star exerted on a huge number of people. The script is not very relevant here, except as a structured series of cues for showing the beautiful scenery and places. The complete disagreement between the title and the plot actually proves what I am saying (unless one considers psychotherapy fun). The songs are a musically unremarkable mish mash of American stereotypes about Latin America whose lowest point is possibly the proverbial misassociation of Brazilian bossa nova with hispanic America. But they are somehow not important either, as they are merely an excuse for displaying the singer's talents. Overall, a poor film, but, as I said, not altogether without a raison d'être or two.

Rating: 31

Savage Sam (1963)

A young man is taking care of his house and of his little brother while their parents are away. They have a dog (the titular Sam) to whom the younger brother is very much attached. The Apache surprise everybody in the region with an attack after a long period without hostilities. They abduct the two brothers and a young woman who is with them. The boys' uncle rounds up a posse to search for the abductees. Sam helps them find the savages' trail.

Juvenile Western. The Apache (and one Comanche) are the enemies, but the film wastes a few lines of dialogue to explain their position.

[Pack: Don't tell me about right and wrong.         
White: I'm not trying to tell you anything, Pack.
Pack: Then don't argue with me about Injun killing.           
White: I wasn't arguing. I merely said the reason the Indians fight so hard is the white man's crowding in, killing off the buffalo. That's all.
Pack: Them Injuns don't own the land, they don't own the buffalo.   
White: Maybe not, but after thousands of years they feel as though they have a right to it.       
Pack: They're gonna learn different. And I learn 'em.       
White: Sometimes hard to tell who the savages are.       
Pack: Dirty Injun lover !           
Beck: Quit that! Quit it out, I said! Quit that!       
Pack: He can't talk to me that way !                     
Beck: I said, quit it.  We go fightin' amongst ourselves, we're never gonna catch no Injuns.]

Then it wastes a few more lines to explain Pack's position:

[White: I didn't mean to get him so upset.
Beck: I know that.                   
White: I never saw a man so full of hate.           
Beck: Well, there's things that can sometimes breed hate in a man. 
White: Not like that.         
Beck: You're new out here, white. You're gonna find this is a hard country. You go to fightin' it, and it fights you right back every inch of the way. Ain't Virginia.               
White: I realize that, Beck.     
White: I mean, out here a man puts in a crop of corn and you bust your back watering it and hoeing it, and just before harvest it gets set on by hoppers. They hate the land. And you got about 50 head of cattle ready for market. Then blight comes along and kills 'em all off. You get so you hate everythin'.
White: But not other people the way he does.           
Beck: Look, a couple of years ago, Pack come home-- he come one day and he found his cabin burnt to the ground and his wife and three kids was killed. All of 'em was scalped. And he about went crazy grievin'. That can turn into hate real easy.]

The proceedings pack a good deal of action but not a whole lot of originality. As is usual in every film, well, almost every film, there is a surface of relative blandness or convention which poorly disguises a more explosive underlayer. In this case, the underlying thesis appears to be that the white woman has a superior sex appeal to non-white males.

Rating: 39

Volga-Volga (1938)

In a small village, a bureaucrat in charge of fostering the local arts and crafts dreams of being promoted to a job in Moscow. That promotion does not come, but he is invited to select a team of artists to take part in a contest of amateur art being held in the Soviet capital. There is a quarrel among the artists which results in the local orchestra being the only ones selected to go. The folk artists will not take that sitting down, and decide to go by sailboat (the others travel on an old steamboat). The local postwoman, who is also a singer, gets separated from her fiancee: he boards the steamboat and she, the sailboat. She has composed a song which eventually becomes the orchestra's chosen entry in the contest. She at first will not reveal she is the songwriter, attributing its authorship to someone else instead.

Musical comedy which reportedly was produced with the intent of showing Soviet peasants and villagers as happy people. The film is very energetic and has nice visuals along the titular river. The songs are nice too. The script is very unsophisticated, but I admit there may be dialogue which simply was not translated in the subitles, and therefore escaped me altogether. This seems to have been a very popular movie, but it is rather lacking in substance and mediocre in artistry.

Rating: 35

Domicile conjugal (1970)

English title: Bed and Board.
Faithful title translation: Conjugal Abode.

Antoine is married to Christine. She gets pregnant. He gets a better job. His son is born. He has an affair.

Quirky dramatic comedy with a main theme -- the day-to-day mechanics of marriage -- which perhaps is meant to disguise under its banality a supposedly secondary -- and arguably more polemic -- one: interracial relationships. The main thesis seems to be that such relationships have a traplike nature: attraction is greater, but disillusionment is in the same proportion. The film, written by three hands, is funny, at times in an outrageous fashion -- take, for examples, the jobs held by the protagonist.

Rating: 52

Here Comes the Groom (1951)

An American reporter runs a home for World War II orphans in Paris. Back home, his neglected fiancee gives him an ultimatum. He fails to comply, and she gets engaged to her millionaire boss. He flies back to America with the purpose to win her back. He takes two of the orphans with him.

Awful musical comedy, with one of the most unconvincing endings in film history. The plot bets on schmaltz. It's like that: you start out feeling solidary to all the abandoned children of the world, and then, all of a sudden, they decide that the script can afford only two of them (and the second one is initially an extra burden which prompts a sigh of fatigue in the protagonist). And you go along, and are, all of a sudden, not overconcerned with the remaining children. A curious thing for modern viewers is to witness what the old sensibilities had to say about catcalls. They were seen as a positive thing. Well, I will not count this as a merit of the film. Everybody thought catcalls were a positive thing in 1951.

Rating: 13

Riding High (1950)

Remake of Broadway Bill (1934).

Dan is mad about horse racing and not as keen on business management; that preference is not well looked upon by his fiancee and by her father, who gave him one of his companies to run. Dan decides to quit that position and devote all his energies to entering his horse in an upcoming race. His fiancee's sister is his fervent supporter.

Uninspired comedy which provides a view of the insides of race tracking. The plot and sense of humor are very 1930s, which is not exactly a surprise, this being a remake of a 1934 movie. There are a few songs thrown in, which look simply out of place. Shortly put, mostly everything looks out of place and out of time in this movie. The high point of the movie is a cameo by a very famous and very brilliant comedian, who plays someone named only as "sucker" in the IMDB page. His glory days were over by 1950, by he does not look a bit out of place or out of time and never would.

Rating: 40

Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)

A race driver wants to make a great comeback by taking part at a competition. His car Herbie has a personality and falls in love with another racing car, driven by a woman. Herbie has other problems as well: a pair of thieves hide a stolen diamond in "his" gasoline tank.

I think this is going too far with the joke, but they obviously did not agree, and neither did the paying public. Anyway, it has pace and nice vistas. Its use of special effects is somewhat more subdued this time, but there is a sequence in a tunnel which is impressive enough.

Rating: 33

Herbie Rides Again (1974)

A construction magnate wants to build a skyscraper on a site in which an old lady's house stands. She refuses to sell her property. A sympathetic woman who lives near her and a nephew of the magnate help the old lady. The old lady's car, which is endowed with thought, self-command, and gravity-defying powers, helps too.

Less dull than the first movie, possibly because the special effects technology was more advanced in 1974 than it was in 1968. It is still a below-par entertainment, in my opinion, and the concept of a humanized machine is not my idea of healthy. The plot was reused by a recent Brazilian left-wing movie (this is where Brazilian left-wing movies take their inspiration from: old American fluff). There were no car antics in the Brazilian movie (just my educated guess, since I have not seen it), but the protagonist is also an old lady. The difference is that the Brazilian actress abused plastic surgery and looks awful, whereas the American one looks splendidly natural and naturally splendid. Here is the latter's take on the subject:

W Is for Wrinkles

Rating: 40

Hondo (1953)

In a depopulated site at the Arizona desert, a stranger arrives at a ranch where a woman lives with her six-year-old son. She says her husband is due back in a few days. She gives shelter to the stranger, who tells her that the Apache are going to wage war against the white men.

Paeans to the half-breed were becoming very common in the American cinema from the fifties onward. The subject of divided loyalty is more or less the central theme in this kind of movie. In this one, I could not help being amused at the moral juggling performed by the central character, aided by the screenwriter's helpful contrivances. Anyway, around the fifties, film viewers could no longer swallow the simple white-good, red-bad kind of manicheism that previous westerns churned out. Perhaps it was worn out by exposure and the passage of time; World War II probably helped speed the process. So, they needed a little more nuanced view. Later on, they would scrap nuance once again, and go full white-bad, red-good in Dances with Wolves and God knows what other movies. Anyway, Hondo is a moderately entertaining movie if you are not too picky about ideological issues.

Rating: 46

12 stulyev (1971)

Alternative spellings: 12 stulev; Dvenadtsat stulyev

English title: The Twelve Chairs

Based on the novel by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, first published in 1928.

USSR, 1927. A dying woman reveals to her son-in-law that she hid the family diamonds in one of the twelve chairs from her household's old furniture, which was seized by the Bolsheviks. Her son-in-law, in association with a con man, search all through Russia for the chair which contains the diamonds. The priest who gave the woman the last rites overhears her revelation and goes chair hunting too.

Bland comedy which has enough pace, energy and farcical humor to keep a moderately demanding viewer moderately entertained. The actors are good, and the production values are satisfactorily high.

IMDB says the aspect ratio is 1.37; the version I saw was formatted in a 1.78 aspect ratio.

Rating: 41

O Lamparina (1964)

A wandering family of peasants dress in cangaceiro clothes (cangaceiros were rural bandits of Northeastern Brazil in the 19th and early 20th century) and are mistaken for bandits. They join a gang of said outlaws, and after a while decide to turn them in to the police.

Poor comedy, cashing in on the Brazilian fad of cangaceiro movies which started with O Cangaceiro. People call it a parody of those movies, but it fits that category only in a very loose way. The film may be roughly divided into two parts. The first part is where cangaceiros feature more prominently; that is when the central comedian has an ampler room to display his histrionic abilities. The second part is set at a small village after the main character goes missing and is thought dead. I could not find much of interest in either part of the movie. The script is borderline moronic and the humor is mostly infantile. As a curiosity, the actress who plays the chief cangaceiro's wife is three days younger than the actor who plays her son, a reluctant cangaceiro who wants to go straight and marry the title character's daughter.

Rating: 19

O puritano da rua Augusta (1965)

Man becomes obsessed with a perceived lack of morals of the younger generation, and joins a group of fanatics. His young wife is annoyed by his behavior. So are his two sons and daughter, all from a previous marriage. 

Comedy which has an interesting first section and becomes progressively worse as it goes along. Best sequence of the film: the ciprianites, a group of fanatical moralistic preachers, are gathered at a public park and a guy on a bus teases them, to which they answer in chant. Another sequence which is worth watching, especially if you are a fan of Brazilian music, is a delightful number with young Elza Soares. But the film lacks a more consistent script, one with a minimally decent plot. It becomes repetitive after a while, and then the central character goes through a poorly explained change, and then the film really loses it, descending into an unbearable mess.

Rating: 31

Brilliantovaya ruka (1969)

English title: The Diamond Arm

A common guy goes out on a vacation trip and unwittingly becomes a bearer of smuggled jewels, which were placed on him under an arm cast after he suffers an accident. After he becomes aware of his misfortune, he makes contact with the police, who use him as an undercover agent to catch the smugglers.

Comedy of errors, with plenty of action and good actors. It is frequently said that much of its humor is lost in translation, so I am not confident I will be able to assess it reliably. On the other hand, there is not a lot I did not understand about the plot and the dialogue, what there was of them in the subtitles anyway. All that being said, I was not overly fond of this film. It qualifies as a passable time waster, with a few mild laughs every once in a while, and that is all.

Rating: 39

Meu Japão brasileiro (1964)

In an agricultural community in Brazil, the farmers, who are mostly of Japanese descent, are explored by a monopolistic middleman, who is also the local police chief. The owner of a boarding house tries to mobilize the community so as to start an agricultural cooperative which would set them free from the middleman.

*spoilers below*
There are interesting aspects to this film's plot. It starts out as a drama about poor landowners who are exploited by a greedy tradesman, who is the villain of the film. The fact that the latter is also a police chief makes the film also a denunciation of power abuse. Later in the film, the racial question goes to the forefront of the plot. The villain frames a Japanese man in a murder attempt so as to instill racial hatred in the non-Japanese people. And the villain's younger son marries a Japanese woman -- a further complication. So, the film is not completely without merit. On the other hand, it is not an exceedingly well made film, and the middle section flirts with farce in a way which is in complete dissonance with the gravity established in the beginning of the film. Also, there are a few plot points which are plainly absurd. The villain kidnaps the hero's wife and claims she was killed in a road accident. The motive for such behavior is obscure, to say the least. How he initially gets away with not showing the body is another implausibility. Then, after the hero finds his wife alive, his decision to hide her from view is also incomprehensible on any grounds other than plot convenience.

Rating: 31

Space Jam (1996)

Comedy which mixes animation with live-action. In the animation realm, a greedy carnival owner decides to kidnap some famous cartoon characters and turn them into carnival attractions. The cartoon characters talk their kidnappers into a contest the result of which will decide their fate. They choose basketball as the form of dispute, and then invite a great player, now retired, to play on their team.

This is an exercise on technique, and no more than that. The script is really unfunny, and the plot does not even make sense. I mean, what kidnapper would agree to a contest with his victims? Even the cartoon characters' design were ugly, to my taste. At any rate, this movie makes us think: what made the 50s so superior to the 90s? I don't know the answer to that. Nevertheless, perhaps more a symptom than a cause, in the 50s there were no "tributes" to art made half a century earlier.

Rating: 13

O corintiano (1967)

The story is set in Brazil. A fanatical football fan is a nuisance to his family. Every social interaction in which he engages is tainted by his adherence to one football team. His authoritarian personality becomes too much for his son and daughter to withstand, and they decide to leave their parents' house.

Mostly unremarkable dramatic comedy, which was aimed at the central comedian's low-brow audience. It is not devoid of social observation and some basic storytelling skill. Perhaps I am inevitably less critical of it than a non-Brazilian viewer would be, since I am more familiar with the social context it depicts. The film works as a mild critique of bigotry and authoritarianism, but is miles away from being provocative or status quo defying.

Rating: 33

Up (2009)

An elderly widower attaches a huge number of balloons to his house and flies away to a South American waterfall he and his late wife had vowed to visit. Unknowingly to him a boy scout was on the front porch when the house lifted off.

Overrated animated movie. It is all very pretty but they just didn't have a solid story to make a movie on. They clearly were forced to introduce some excitement into their material and in the process some very unreasonable character behavior was inserted. Also, all the visual beauty and all the action could not disguise the depressing undertones that pervade the plot (one commenter on IMDB has suggested that the title should be Down).

Rating: 40

Elephant Walk (1954)

Woman meets man, falls in love with him and marries him. He lives in Ceylon where he has a tea plantation. He brings her to live with him in Ceylon. His dead father is revered by him and by the community living there. This reverence, and the sort of behavior it entails, is a source of discomfort to the wife. She feels connected to one of his husband's employees, who falls in love with her. He is quitting the plantation and wants to take her with him.

This is a variation on Rebecca, and brings the story closer to the ultimate source of both stories, the folktale Bluebeard. Another very similar movie to Elephant Walk is The Naked Jungle, released in the same year. Very few people seem to have enjoyed Elephant Walk much, and I am no different from the majority here. The lavish production, partial location shooting, and interesting cast give the film a modicum of watchability, but it feels at once contrived and short on thrills, except for the final section, which comes too late to save the movie.

Rating: 47

Wings (1927)

In 1917, the U.S.A. entered World War I. The film follows the exploits of two young men from the same town, Jack and David, who fought in the war as combat pilots. Mary, who loves Jack but is not loved back, also enlists as an ambulance driver. Jack and David love Sylvia, who loves Richard and doesn't join the war effort.

This is a mediocre movie in every aspect except the technical one. For me, an extra factor of interest was to see for the first time a performance by Clara Bow. She has extraordinary acting capabilities, but, alas, her character seems to be on the border of mental retardation. The actor who plays Jack -- a nice performance -- has a slight resemblance, in physiognomy and mannerisms, to Robert Downey, Jr. Jack's pal David, on the other hand, is played as a zombie. The last act is based on the same narrative concept as Oedipus Rex: someone frantically tries to correct some evil and that is exactly what brings it about. This is a depressingly pro-war movie, in the very opposite end of the ideological spectrum from All Quiet in the Western Front, released three years later. The most interesting thing about the film is its reception, especially among IMDB users. You will not find a single unkind word in them. It is not uncommon to find viewers who thought this is an anti-war movie.

Rating: 40

The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966)

Partial rendering of the book of Genesis, comprising the Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the story of Abraham (including Sodom and Gomorrah).

Arguably imperfect at parts, yet mostly successful as an adaptation. According to Wikipedia, Variety wrote that it had "skill, taste and reverence". This is, I think, correct for about 90% of the film. Here and there, one perhaps might notice a little awkwardness in the dialogue which certainly stemmed from the difficulty of the adaptation task at hand. And it is equally certain that irreverence was not what they were aiming for, but whenever a dramatization occurs it is inevitable that a certain amount of ambivalence or downright critique will find its way into the work, and that is not a bad thing. Thus, the dictatorial nature of the monotheistic cult surfaces in the dialogue on occasion. Noah was portrayed with daft mannerisms, which was also an interesting authorial touch. The musical score was one of the most attractive features of the film. Now, if I am allowed to, I would like to wander off the review itself to insert a musing of mine. The name "Babel" is phonetically identical to the word "babble", and the most surprising thing for me is that both words' respective meanings are closely related too. Apparently there is no evidence that this is more than a coincidence.

Rating: 64

Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966)

A pilot who has just lost his job as an airline pilot returns to his homeland and invites his long-time friend to be his partner in a new venture, namely, a helicopter charter company. However, his womanizing tendencies jeopardize the future of their business.

It is a mere trifle, but the dialogue has some wit to it, and the landscapes are gorgeous. It is mostly a sex comedy (and musical), with the sex confined mostly in the suggestive dialogue and in the semi-clad women, in order to secure a G rating. The central idea of the plot seems to be that entrepreneurship demands a low aversion to risk, and a certain amount of irresponsibility. Thus, there is a paradox in capitalism by which the very thing that makes it possible is the one that makes it doomed. But I am not Karl Marx, so I will stop right here.

Rating: 31

My Cousin Rachel (1952)

Philip is an English man who lost both his parents when he was a child and was raised by his benevolent cousin. The latter, while living abroad, falls in love with Rachel, a young widow, and marries her. His health deteriorates and he eventually dies. His letters to Philip threw suspicion on Rachel. She comes to visit Philip and the latter, who had vowed to avenge his cousin, gradually begins to have second thoughts on his feelings about her.

Contrived melodrama which becomes exceedingly silly as the plot unfolds. The central theme is the interference of love on suspicion, and vice-versa. There is a bit of psychological insight in making Philip hasteful to condemn and then equally hasteful to trust. Unfortunately, there are very implausible turns taken by the plot which dim the interest considerably. All in all, a watchable yet minor film.

Rating: 45

What a Way to Go! (1964)

A woman goes through a succession of marriages which end with her husbands' deaths. She begins to think she is jinxed.

*spoilers below*

This is a highly sophisticated production which somehow falls short of greatness. The sense of humor is a little stiff, and that may have had a detrimental effect on my enjoyment of it. Nevertheless, it still is a respectable spectacle, and one with a nicely thought out script encapsulating an interesting thesis. That thesis says that people are predestined to a certain station in life, and any attempt to change it is bound to fail, and possibly even lead to one's death. Curiously enough, there is one character who never strays from that truth -- namely, the female protagonist. However, her happiness is delayed due to her difficulty in finding her right male match. The film examines the cases of five men -- besides, of course, the aforementioned female protagonist. The cases examined are: two store owners, a painter, a business tycoon, and a sing-and-dance performer. She marries them all, and all but one die. Three of them die because they follow an illusory way out of the mediocrity which in fact was their natural state. One of them -- the tycoon -- does the inverse: he settles for a mediocre life which was impossible for him. The last one, although born into wealth, is not really deserving of it, and only finds happiness when circumstances strip him of his wealth. As I said, the film is not particularly funny, and, as critic Nathan Rabin noticed, seems to make fun of itself when it features a parody of Hollywood's extravagant productions. There are several different parodies throughout the movie, one for each unsuccessful marriage, and aiming at a specific movie genre. Critic Michael Barrett has a funny joke about this film's director: "The latter part of his career was mostly spent on Charles Bronson movies. What a way to go." I could not help but laugh, even though I, being an ardent Bronson fan, could not disagree more. The links to the reviews I cited are below:

Nathan Rabin's review

Michael Barrett's review

As a final caveat, I would like to remark that the film is very well made, and, although I am never really sure about a director's actual contribution to the end result of a movie, I can say for sure that this director did not goof up in any way.

Rating: 51

GoldenEye (1995)

A Russian base in Siberia is attacked and two satellite weapons are "stolen" (meaning the software that controls them is). An MI-6 agent is assigned to investigate the event, and he finds out that a rogue Russian general is one of the persons behind the attack and theft.

The formula still shows some vigor (though some critics at the time decreed its exhaustion). The film is comprised of well-done action set-pieces. The screenplay tries to add a little self-consciousness to its proceedings by inserting the concept of sexism into them. The erotic bits are over-the-top savage at their best and ridiculously mellow at their worst. The political background has not found echo in real events past or future: the Soviet backlash has only existed in the fantasies of screenwriters. Not a particularly remarkable movie, except for one sequence where the protagonist freefalls into boarding a plane.

Rating: 51

Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997)

Preferred (and quite absurd) wording of the title: The Lost Word: Jurassic Park

Dinosaurs resulting from a genetic engineering experiment are living freely on a Pacific island. The company responsible for said experiment is intent on using the dinosaurs for financial profit on a park in San Diego. The former head of the company tries to avoid this by sending his own group of men there. After some dinosaurs destroy much of the equipment brought on the island, the rival teams unite for their survival.

While the title and basic premise directly evoke Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, the plot is closer to King Kong. There is a more curious parallel, however, with Schindler's List, of which this film is a cinematic anagram, or distorted mirror image, of sorts. Whereas Schindler's List, released on the same year as the first Jurassic Park, was a defense of greed over fanaticism, in Jurassic Park: The Lost World the good guys are its science fanatics fighting irresponsible capitalists whose greed is a threat not only to science but to humankind as a whole. There is a structural correspondence between the two films, with the Nazi Party being replaced by a paleontologist sponsored by a repentant capitalist, Schindler being replaced by a new CEO who wants to milk the dinosaurs for their entertainment value, Göth being replaced by a big-game hunter who wants a Tyrannosaurus Rex among his trophies, Jews being replaced by dinosaurs, and Itzhak Stern of the Jewish Council being replaced by a chaos mathematician. As is recurrent in this filmmaker's work, persecution sets the tone, with carefully elaborated sequences devised for maximizing the tension. Also present is an identification and even empathy with what is, in many ways, alien, another persistent theme in his oeuvre. An analysis of this -- I think I can call it -- ideology, is certainly a task worth taking. It is an ideology from which I am personally quite distant, and for which I could muster an intrigued interest at best.

Rating: 43

11 minut (2015)

English title: 11 Minutes

Several characters' lives are depicted during the same 11-second period. The longest-lasting plotline is that of an actress who goes to an audition with a director, and his jealous husband who follows her. Others include a hot dog vendor, a couple in a hotel room, a thief, a sketch artist, a motorcycle courier, a young woman with a dog, some nuns, a woman in labor, a team of paramedics, and maybe others I forget.

It has a type of film structure which was somewhat in fashion in the nineties and early aughts, that of multiples plots which intersect. Critics correctly pointed out the structural similarity with a related genre, that of the fatal synchronicity -- of the Fatal Destination franchise. Here, however, it's not done in a thriller style. There is no steadily mounting tension; instead, there is an ominous feel which derives from the stories themselves and is accentuated by a celestial phenomenon which goes unexplained. It is not a particularly remarkable movie, but I found the situations and dialogue mildly interesting. I still do not fathom why a character who is described by reviewers as a window cleaner uses a blowtorch to perform his job.

Rating: 50

Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964)

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, a former Confederate soldier returns to his hometown to find that his property has been confiscated and his former girlfriend is now married to another man who fought for the North. He accidentally kills the new owner of his former house. The townspeople agree to send for a gunfighter to kill him.

It seems that this film eschews realism in a deliberate way for characters and situations which put in evidence some historical themes which in turn have lingering social repercussions in America to the days in which the film was released. The result is not especially insightful or entertaining, but has some degree of dramatic density which makes it watchable.

Rating: 40

Antoine et Colette (1962)

English title: Antoine and Colette (originally a segment of Love at Twenty)

Young man is lovestruck by a young woman he spots at a concert. He moves across the street from her to be nearer her.

Fairly good short, which was shown on the cable channel I subscribe to without the remaining segments which comprise L'amour à vingt ans. The author remarked on an interview that its moral lesson is that wanting too much may cause one to lose even the little one has, but viewers are free to think differently about life, and still enjoy the movie.

I could not decide to rate this movie, because of its short length, and also because it was originally part of a multi-segment movie.

In Harm's Way (1965)

The film follows the military developments in the Pacific during and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The central character is a ship captain who, after a suspension, is reinstated and leads an operation to take back some islands who were controlled by the Japanese. Concurrently with the military action, we follow the private lives of some of the characters. The protagonist gets involved with a nurse, and meets his son, from whom he had been estranged. There is also the ship's executive officer, who has problems with alcohol, and an unfaithful wife. He later gets involved with a younger woman.

Entertaining war drama, which manages a nice balance between military action and personal drama. It is interesting also that the operations are all fictitious, but reportedly give a good idea of what the Pacific war was like in that period and region. While not a groundbreaking or impacting work, it is not as bad as some reviewers have said it is. One of the critics of the time put it in her worst-of-year list, ranked second.

Rating: 57

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

In a small town, a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered puts billboards on the roadside near the town, questioning the police chief about the unsolved crime.

Drama with touches of humor. The dialogue at times lacks a more serious consideration of psychology or social context. There is a distinctly sophomoric quality to the script in general. The low point is possibly when a character's letter teaches an ex-policeman to cast aside hate, and embrace love instead. High philosophy indeed. The plot does not seem to be interested in exciting developments or surprises, and the film is poor also as a mere social chronicle.

Rating: 33

Sayonara (1957)

A U.S. Air Force pilot who is fighting in the Korean war gets assigned to a desk job in Japan, where his girlfriend is living with her parents. He takes another sentimental turn, however, courting, and then having a relationship with a Japanese theatrical performer.

It is difficult for me to decide what was more aggravating: this film or the recent reception it got. As a matter of fact, whenever I read the word 'racism' I know I am in for some serious stomach discomfort. We are definitely living in the planet of the Parrobots -- a word of my own coinage that designates a blend of a parrot and a robot. I honestly do not think there is any racism in the historical events which provide the context of this film's plot. But, of course, racism is a word that is used more and more loosely with each passing day. And, I am forced to say, that trend began around the time this film was made. Another interesting aspect is how 'love' is such a useful concept when people want to tell lies, and how those same people tear that concept apart when they want to tell a different sort of lies. Getting back to the film, part of it is a legitimate dramatization of the real problem of loneliness that afflicted many soldiers. and how some post-war regulations put some of them in a rather sad situation. Unfortunately, this is merely an instrument to highlight the drama of a war hero who has a beautiful American girlfriend and, implausibly enough, ditches her for a Japanese woman. To compound the implausibility, this prompts the American girlfriend to befriend a Japanese male performer and delve into Japanese culture. In short, it is a feast of international exchange, with a tragedy thrown in for good measure. Anyway, movies are prisoners of history, albeit in dissimulated ways, and it is never too much to remind one that the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam in 1957 and there was the Voting Act that same year. People like to be preached at, as long they are entertained in the process. And if you still think the main character is incomprehensible, there is always Poe's The Imp of the Perverse to provide some clarification.

Rating: 38

Westward Ho the Wagons! (1956)

In 19th-century America, a group of settlers crosses Indian territory bound for Oregon. They first meet the fierce Pawnee, who attack them; after fleeing them, they encounter the somewhat friendlier Sioux. The main character is a self-taught physician who saves the day when the Sioux chief's son falls ill.

Western intended for family audiences. A few songs are thrown in, for good measure, or bad, depending on one's taste. It is nothing to write home about, but I found it both credible and exciting, to a moderate degree. Anyway, it is good to still have the opportunity to watch a movie which is not ashamed to depict whites as smart and proficient (though not all of them). It was also amusing to learn that the actor who played the Sioux medicine man was actually of Southern Italian ethnicity. The film was shot in 2.35 CinemaScope, but I watched a 1.33 version. To be frank, the frame did not look crammed or incomplete in the least. Maybe the shots were conceived having the Disneyland version which would air a few years later in mind.

Rating: 51

The Robe (1953)

A Roman tribune is assigned to Palestine, where he is put in charge of the crucifixion of Jesus. The contact with Jesus' robe has some debilitating effects on the tribune.

This is a very ridiculous film, with some interesting location work (in Spain, apparently, among other places in the U.S.). It, and of course its source novel before it, seems to be a variation on Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and also on The Cloak, a short story by Robert Bloch about a man who unwittingly buys Count Dracula's cloak. Conrad's novel is about colonialism and madness, and The Robe is what a humorous version of that story would be, if there was any voluntary humor in it. As it turns out, this is a work of involuntary comicity, not without some residual entertainment value. According to the Internet Movie Database, two versions were made, with aspect ratios 1.33 and 2.55, respectively, but the version I saw fitted exactly a 1.78 aspect ratio television set.

Rating: 33

White Christmas (1954)

Two ex-comrades-in-arms team up as a song and dance duo. They meet two sisters who are also performers and become romantically entangled with them. The sisters have an assignment at a hotel, and are followed by the guys, who find out the hotel owner happens to be their former commanding general.

The script is absolutely dreadful. We are supposed to believe retired generals have a harder time than the discharged rank and file. As for the central romantic misunderstanding, it is very contrived and implausible, and the male protagonist never even gets to know what happened, and doesn't seem to care either. The film looks gorgeous in every aspect -- cinematography, costumes, dances, you name it. If you think you can focus on its aesthetics and not care too much about what is going on with the characters, you may enjoy this film quite a bit. I found I could not.

Rating: 34

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Couple with children moves to a house where a man killed his family. Strange occurrences inside the house disturb the newly moved family.

I decided to revisit this film because I had given it such a low rating and afterwards saw some favorable comments about it. Indeed, it is not as bad as I had considered it to be. But it is not much better, either. It displays enough technical proficiency as to be watchable, I have to give it that. But somehow I did not get overly excited by its tricks. I was, on the other hand, intrigued by its reception. Some people have converged, according to Wikipedia, on an interpretation of the troubles of the protagonist as being of a financial kind. Well, that is funny, because one could point one's hermeneutical compass on several different directions other than this. The fact is that the film has no concern over consistency or even logic, and ends up being a cinematical Rorschach test. It is better enjoyed as a merely mechanical device for atmosphere and shocks, and the characters' predicaments turn out to be more annoying than frightening from a viewer's perspective. Brolin's performance stands out among the fine cast.

Rating: 32 (up from 15)

Lifeboat (1944)

During World War II, several British and American passengers of a ship get stranded on a lifeboat in the ocean after their ship is torpedoed by a German submarine, which was also destroyed in the process. One of the survivors of the U-Boat is rescued by them.

 You can read the story of this film's reception on Wikipedia (here's the link). In short, critics Bosley Crowther and Dorothy Thompson, and others who go unnamed, pointed out that the film was actually pro-Nazi propaganda. The film's director gave a half-assed defense statement, which was followed by a moronic one by his lead actress. In the context of the plot, the German character is the one with a solid reasoning, and without him the allies would all perish were it not for a deus ex machina event. The argument saying that this is supposed to awaken the allies to their disunion is ridiculous. How is that cohesion to be achieved? The film does not say. The point that one should not trust a Nazi is such a trivial one -- considering you are a war enemy of the Nazis -- that it is hard to believe they would make a movie to demonstrate that. The film has an ambiguous take on democracy: the Nazis were bad because they were not democratic (never mind the fact that Hitler came to power by popular vote), but this is also depicted as a strength. From a factual perspective this is even more problematic, since England and America did not win the war by themselves. There was a hugely significant contribution by the USSR, which was never democratic in the commonly accepted sense of the word (and, in my opinion, in any sense one could imagine). Anyway, in the scope of the film's allegory, there is no room for discussing the spaces and subspaces of democracy. A military environment is not supposed to be democratic; any person of minimal intelligence should know that. It is the military organization as a whole who is or is not subordinated to a democratic power. But the major point perhaps is that the proposed allegory is a problematic one to begin with. People in general are not confined with their enemies in a restricted location in a real war.

Rating: 38

Le souffle au coeur (1971)

Second viewing; first viewed, with cuts, on November 12, 1989.

English title: Murmur of the Heart

A few days (or is it months?) in the life of a 14-year-old boy. His somewhat brutish older brothers, his somewhat distant, unloving, father, his warm, but somewhat irresponsible mother, a health problem, books, a younger boy who seems to be a kindred spirit, a visit to the brothel, some days at a camp, some days at a hotel convalescing. His parents have steady lovers. Sex with his mother.

I had to watch this because I was curious about what I had missed on my first viewing -- it had cuts imposed by the Brazilian governmental censorship (censorship was no longer active in 1989, but the copy was from that earlier period). As it turns out, I don't quite remember what the cuts were, and in fact very little of the film as a whole stuck on my memory. But I remember having liked it more upon my previous viewing than I liked it now. It's a succession of quite banal events, wrapped up by a shocking last section. It is all played up in a light tone, however, and I guess that makes it a comedy of sorts. It is an odd combination of true-to-life chronicle and more, say, imaginative, elements. Perhaps it says more about 1971, the year in which  it was released, than about 1954, the year in which it is set.

Rating: 52 (down from 65)

A New Kind of Love (1963)

A newspaper columnist meets a fashion designer in a plane to Paris. In that city, he mistakes her for a prostitute.

The two main characters are a man who devotes too much time to women, and a woman who devotes too little time to men. It's sort of a romantic comedy, but with the mellowness which is usual in this genre being replaced by comicity. Perhaps I should write that as 'attempted comicity', as it is not sure to make one laugh. It is not a very likeable movie, because the screenplay poses problems to itself which are not easy to solve in an elegant manner, but at the very least it sustains a coherent line of analysis of two types of characters: the womanizer and the masculine woman. In real life, these types tend to go on being like that all their lives and usually find, each of them, a niche of their own. In the movie, however, they fall in love with each other and reform their characters. It is a new kind of moralism.

Rating: 42

Morituri (1965)

World War II, 1942. A German engineer living in India is blackmailed into assuming the identity of an SS officer and embarking on a German ship which is transporting rubber from Japan to France. The allies plan to intercept that ship and the engineer's mission is to prevent it from being scuttled by the ship's captain when that interception occurs.

This is a very tense film which adopts the point of view of an impostor. His efforts at not being unmasked and simultaneously accomplishing a difficult task are at the center of the movie. The situation in the ship is unstable even without his presence, and he must use that instability in his favor. There is a fascinating power play amongst the various persons in the ship that makes it a metonimic model of a larger community -- say, a nation. The film puts in evidence how a foreign entity -- in this case, the protagonist -- with a blending capability and a survival agenda may be dangerous to the existence and goals of a community. The author or authors seem to have taken into their hands a mission that is, in itself, just as challenging as that of the protagonist: to rebuke Adolf Hitler's considerations on the question "Is this a German?". They even have added a Jewish woman into the narrative, perhaps for illustrative purposes. The initial dialogue held in an Indian house is essential for the full understanding of the film: the protagonist has evaded war, loves "art" and considers himself a pacifist. As it turns out, he becomes an example of the famous saying by Trotsky: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Of course, a fictional narrative is necessarily a partial view of any problem, but the effort is commendable anyway.

Rating: 60

Armed and Dangerous (1986)

A policeman and a lawyer, both expelled from their respective professions, apply at a private security company and become partners. They uncover a ring of thieves led by the union bosses and with the complicity of the security company manager himself.

Modest comedy with little originality and few laughs. There is a lot of car action, which includes chases, explosions, and collisions.

Rating: 35

The Carpetbaggers (1964)

The son of a wealthy industrialist inherits his father's businesses and works relentlessly to expand them. He has a secret childhood trauma which may be behind his incessant drive. With no concern for friendship, love, or ethics, he becomes one of the most powerful men in America. His understanding wife eventually divorces him. When he enters the film business, he turns his stepmother, with whom he has a love-hate relationship, into the star of his movie.

The hero (or anti-hero) is a fictionalized version of Howard Hughes, but they didn't include OCD among his traits as did the later, more faithful rendering of The Aviator. The (anti)-heroine Marlowe is based on screen legend Harlow. The film is interesting for its genetically themed plot, which manifests itself in the protagonist's fear of having a son who will display his twin brother's traits; also, he eventually becomes psychologically very alike his own father, whom he hated. This film was a huge box-office success because it embodies with perfection the ideology of the average middle-class filmgoer.

Rating: 38

Izgnanie (2007)

English title: The Banishment

Inspired by the novel The Laughing Matter, by William Saroyan, first published in 1953

A woman tells his husband that the child she is expecting is not his. He convinces her to make an abortion.

One of the worst films ever made, for sure. I guess very bad films have a purpose, just like all others. They serve to point out in what shape is the ages' sensibility. If people like it, it is evidence that it is in a really bad shape. Anyway, I like jokes, but I prefer good ones to bad ones, and I much prefer they are not on me. I will not give it a zero because of some nice-looking shots, both urban and rural.

Rating:8

Nastroyshchik (2004)

English title: The Tuner

Inspired by the memoirs of Arkady Franzevich Koshko (1867-1928), a Russian police detective.

Close friends Lyuba and Anna are middle-aged and well-off. Lyuba places ads in the paper looking for a husband, but she always meets the wrong kind of men, who take her money and disappear. Anna and Lyuba befriend Andrei, a piano tuner and con man. Andrei and his girlfriend see in widow Anna a potential target of their scams.

Meandering farce in black-and-white, occasionally amusing but overlong and eventually tiresome.

Rating: 42

Pranzo di ferragosto (2008)

English title: Mid-August Lunch

Middle-aged Gianni lives with his very old mother and is deep in debt. He is very fond of white wine and also cooks very well. His best friend goes by the nickname of Viking and is always sitting at the sidewalk in front of the liquor store. Gianni has a visitor with alarming news: it is his condo's administrator, who says Gianni will be evicted if he does not pay some of his debt. But he offers Gianni a deal: he will pay up part of Gianni's debt in exchange for Gianni taking care of his mother (and, as it later turns up, his aunt) during a few days. A short while later, his doctor asks him a similar favor. Gianni accepts, and for a few days has to manage a complicated domestic situation. But is it only for a few days or is it a financially profitable opportunity for Gianni?

It is quite incredible that this simple and relatively short film, which is little more than a sitcom episode of sorts, has met with such an enthusiastic reception. Are we this poor of cinematic offerings these days (this was ten years ago, but what has changed?). Apparently, yes. Anyway, there you have it, what can I say in the way of criticism? Nothing really.

Rating: 33

Shijie (2004)

English title: The World

The lives of several characters who work at a theme park near Beijing.

Lethargic chronicle of a few characters' lives. While hard to sit through, it has some informational interest for depicting the working class in China. A country which has gone through one major revolution and a few minor ones should not have the exploitative kind of economy one sees here -- in one scene, the overworked victim of a work accident  writes his last words in a piece of paper: it is the money he owes his colleagues and a food sales stand. It is too bad the film is otherwise tedious, and even occasionally cringeworthy, for example in the depiction of the friendship between the protagonist and a Russian émigrée. The ending tops it all in terms of absurdity, but I think very few people will be saddened by its arrival.

Rating: 33

Sharasôju (2003)

English title: Shara

*mild spoilers*
The plot is structured in two segments, occurring a few years apart. The first segment shows the events which led to the disappearance of a child while he was playing with his twin brother. The second segment occurs a few years later, when the remaining child is an adolescent. The plot chronicles the life of that boy's family during a small period of time. His mother is pregnant. They learn that their missing child is dead. There is an upcoming festival, the Basara, for which everyone is preparing. There is another family to which they are close friends consisting of a woman and an adolescent girl who, it is revealed, is not her biological daughter, but rather her niece. The festival, which consists in street dances, takes place. It all culminates with the boy's mother giving birth to another boy.
*end of spoilers*

It is hard for me to point out a single positive aspect of this film. Everything is filmed in an extremely elongated manner, and the little there is of plot is presented without any details, explanations, or follow-up. The acting is nothing remarkable, though this is hardly the actors' fault, since there is very little dramatic material in the movie. Anyway, it seems to have met with an overall positive reception, so I guess it is I who do not have the necessary spiritual maturity to profit from the movie. For what it is worth, the title refers to a tree whose scientific name is Shorea robusta.

Rating: 17

Jil-too-neun na-euh heem (2002)

English title: Jealousy Is My Middle Name
Literally translated title: Jealousy Is My Strength
Gender of the writer-director: female

*spoilers below*
Wonsang, a graduate student, gets a job at a literary magazine whose editor had an affair with his ex-girlfriend. Wonsang starts a relationship with Seongyeon, the magazine's newly hired photographer, who also sleeps with Yunsik, the rude and womanizing editor. At home, Wonsang is coveted by his landlord's daughter, who has family problems -- her father has dementia and her brother shows early signs of it. At work, Wonsang volunteers to do small favors to his boss Yunsik, and the latter starts relying more and more on Wonsang, and getting closer and closer to him on a personal level. Wonsang devotes so much time to Yunsik that this begins to harm his studies and he is unable to deliver his graduation work on time. Also, he is increasingly besieged by his landlord's daughter, who, after having slept with him, pressures him to marry her. His ex-girlfriend tries to reapproach him, but he rebuffs her attempts. He also eventually breaks up with Seongyeon and with his landlord's daughter. Yunsik decides to quit the magazine and start his own, and invites Wonsang to work with him. He also invites Wonsang to live as a guest in his house, where Yunsik's wife and pre-adolescent daughter live as well. In one of the last sequences of the film, Wonsang tries to engage in conversation with Yunsik's daughter, who does not respond; Wonsang eventually leaves the room saying that he hoped they would become good friends.
*end of spoilers*

People who read me must be getting tired of me saying this, but I must say I did not like this movie, although I must admit that it is well-made in regards to scene staging and acting. The overall purpose, to all appearances, is to build up an ominous atmosphere through the most banal of situations. The big problem is that the actions of the protagonist just do not make a whole lot of sense. He must have taken that "Revenge is a dish best served cold" saying in a manner a bit too extreme; also, the wrongdoings he suffered were a bit too mild, to say the least. Also, what does he intend to do? Does it involve his boss's daughter? Everything is very vague. There is even a hint that Yunsik has actually grown into a father, or maybe older-brother, figure to him. Who knows? And, as someone pointed out, who cares?

Rating: 38

Toutes ces belles promesses (2003)

English title: All the Fine Promises

*spoilers below*
Marianne is a cellist living in Paris. She is in a relationship with Étienne, a violinist who plays for the same orchestra as she does. Étienne dumps her for the orchestra's flautist, leaving her in a wretched emotional state. She decides to take a trip to the seaside, to look up her deceased father's mistress. She starts having vivid recollections, first of her dying mother, then of her childhood years. She retrospectively realizes her mother had a lover, who died in a car accident. Arriving at the seaside town, she  finds Béatrice, his father's love affair of many years, who takes her in as a guest in her house. Béatrice introduces Marianne to a local doctor and the two start dating. Béatrice takes Marianne to pay a visit to her childhood nanny Ghislaine, who still lives in that seaside town. When Marianne was a child, Ghislaine was in love with the lighthouse keeper, but now she is alone. Initially after Marianne and Étienne broke up, she called him incessantly, leaving him messages, since he wouldn't take up her calls. Later on, she stops calling. Around that time, Étienne breaks up with the flautist and starts calling Marianne, who does not take up his calls. On the train ride back to Paris, Marianne inadvertently answers a call from Étienne, who says he will wait for her at the station. Marianne asks a passenger to wear her hat in order to deceive Étienne and avoid him. Étienne is deceived by the ruse, but feels attracted to the woman disguised as Marianne and invites her for a cup of coffee, while Marianne watches everything from afar. While Marianne is walking home some young men who were passing by, seeing her in such a sad disposition, tease her and steal her bonnet, saying that they will only give it back if she smiles, which she does. They ask her to wear the bonnet, which she also does.
*end of spoilers*

Except for the initial sequence of an orchestra playing while members of it flirt, this is a terrible film, one of the worst I have seen lately. There is not much I can say as commentary; I have provided a detailed synopsis above, which may help one get an idea of it.

Rating: 25

Or (2004)

English title: Or (My Treasure)

*spoilers below*
Or is a woman in her late teens who lives with her mother Ruthie in a small rented apartment. Or's mother is a prostitute who is being kept away from the streets by her daughter. When the film begins, Ruthie has just checked out from a hospital, one does not know exactly on account of what health problem. Or works at a restaurant as a dish washer, and has a budding relationship with Ido, the owner's son. She is fond of casual sex with strangers, in her apartment or in the dark shadows under any staircase. Or finds a job for Ruthie as a cleaning woman, which is a kind of work she has never done and does not fit her temperament in the least. When Ruthie can she goes out at night to work as a street whore. One day she happens into the landlord and tries to settle her rental debt through sex, but, though he accepted that in the past, is no longer willing to do so. Or's promiscuous sexual behavior is well known in her neighborhood and, after she has sex with Ido, his mother Rachel pays a visit to Ruthie and tells her politely that Ido and Or should not continue their relationship. Or comes home when this talk is happening and they tell her about it. Or at first refuses to comply with Rachel's demand. One night, however, when she is supposed to meet Ido, she receives a visit of one of her earlier flings, and, although reluctant at first, agrees to have sex with him. When Ido approaches her at school, she avoids him and tells him that it's not going to work. Or pays a visit to her landlord and offers herself to him, successfully. She brags about it with her school mates. Or applies for a job at a call girl agency, and is set up on the spot with a client. Ruthie resumes her street prostitution activities, even though Or implores her not to do so. One night, Or comes home to find Ruthie covered with blood on her legs and genital area. She helps Ruthie cleanse herself.
*end of spoilers*

This is yet another film of the "women without men" genre. Everything is quite boring, although one cannot properly say it is badly made. Although not explicity stated, both this film and Gaichû, a film belonging to the same genre, hint at a genetic explanation for the protagonist's behavior. Gaichû deals with the subject of depression, whereas Or' s subject matter appears to be sex drive. Ruthie's motivation isn't only money; she seems to actually enjoy the lifestyle of a prostitute. And it is also apparent that Or has inherited her mother's sex drive, and eventually chooses the profession that fits her best, both psychologically and financially.

Rating: 35

Elephant (2003)

A day in the life of the students at an American high school. That day will prove to be a fateful one as two of the students plan to do a mass shooting.

Most of this film is just below criticism, giving the appearance of being the product of laziness or cowardice (or maybe both). Here and there one finds some interesting bits, owing perhaps to successful improvisation on the part of actors.

Rating: 30

Gaichû (2001)

English title: Harmful Insect

*spoilers below*

Sachiko is a teenage girl who lives a lonely life. His father divorced her mother who goes from one fleeting relationship to the next, with suicide attempts in between. In Sachiko's recent past, when she was thirteen, she had a close friendship with a teacher from her school, who now lives in another town and works at a nuclear power plant. Her colleagues at school make innuendos about that relationship. She befriends a petty crook who lives in a shabby house with an older man with mental problems. Her friend gets into trouble with some hoodlums who beat him badly. After a time away from school, she returns and resumes a friendship with another girl. A boy from school starts courting her. Her school girlfriend gets jealous and tells the boy the gossips about the ex-teacher (this last detail I learned from a review and did not perceive on watching the movie). One day Sachiko returns home and her mother's boyfriend is inside, but her mother is away. He tries to rape Sachiko, but her mother arrives just in time. Sachiko's old outlaw friend dies (apparently). She meets his old housemate and together they set a house (hers?) on fire with molotov cocktails. She calls her  former teacher and sets up a date with him in a restaurant. She hitchhikes to the dating point, which apparently is near where he works. He has some car trouble on the way and tries to call the restaurant but the line is busy. By the time he arrives there, she has just left with a man whom she met at the restaurant. He recruits young girls into  prostitution.

*end of spoilers *

I do not enjoy this sort of movie, and the elliptical style does not make things easier. It is not badly made though, and has some urban sights of Japan which I find interesting. About the drama, I can only hazard a guess that the protagonist is genetically predisposed to depression (that harmful insect), same as her mother. There is a connection with Shônen (1969) through her young friend's dangerous way of making a living. I made a synopsis with more detail than my usual, to make up for my lack of insight into the movie's meaning and purpose.

Rating: 40

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

A man fancies himself a very special kind of prophet with some very important ideas. He goes about preaching and performing some wondrous feats. His criticism of some powerful people garners him dangerous enemies.

An ironically titled satire in which the unfortunate protagonist puts himself in the position of "light of the world", whose purpose is to awaken the same luminosity in everyone else. His plans go horribly wrong, however, as the majority of his followers seem to be aroused chiefly by an egotistical interest in cures for their physical ailments (and who can blame them?), failing to see the allegorical aspect of the miracles. The depiction of the religious and political elites is equally biting. The tone of the film is very somber and solemn, which adds to the turnaround ending's gaiety (our resurrected hero still preaches -- he never tires!).

Rating: 57

War and Peace (1956)

Based on the novel by Liev Tolstoy, first published, in evolving versions, from 1865 to 1869.

The lives of several persons from the Russian upper classes  in 19th century Russia, as Napoleon invades it and starts a war. A Russian general saves Russia by allowing Moscow to be destroyed. Here goes a very short summary of the plot. Pierre loves Natasha but she does not know it. He is probably too old and too intellectual to stir her romantic feelings. Natasha falls in love with Andrei, who is an older man too, and thus is reluctant in marrying Natasha. They postpone a decision to after Andrei returns from the battlefield, but in the meantime Natasha falls in love with Anatole, a cheap seducer. Anatole's plans are foiled by Pierre, who prevents Natasha from eloping with him. Andrei dies from a war wound. Pierre proposes to Natasha and she accepts.

Quite entertaining and photogenic succession of dramatic incidents. The film appears, on a superficial view, to have a very broad ranging dramatic and philosophical scope, but in reality it is mostly a treatise on Russia. The plot has a metaphorical structure in which military actions illustrate erotic ones. Pierre's defense of Natasha mirrors Andrei's defense of Russia. Furthermore, Tolstoy's choice of a French given name for his protagonist (and also for his first wife) points out how France's soft invasion was already happening before Napoleon's hard one. There was no resistance from Russia to soft seduction, but it would not tolerate hard rape. And it is only fair that Pierre gets Natasha in the end; he and the Russian general are masters in the deferment of pleasure, as they refrain from acting at a first moment in order to reap results later; Pierre could have declared his love for Natasha when she was very young, but estimated that his chances for success would be minimal; he lets Natasha get involved with (and scarred by) other men, and only after she ends up alone makes his move. In an analogous fashion, the Russian general lets Bonaparte take Moscow, and after the city is destroyed he makes his move, with the assistance of the Russian winter. Italians and Americans, who were war enemies a decade or so earlier, made this movie together as friends in peacetime.

Rating: 59

Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Based on the books Darby O'Gill and the Good People (1st published as a series of stories in 1901 and 1902), and Ashes of Old Wishes and other Darby O'Gill Tales (1st published in 1926), by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (born Herminie McGibney).

The plot revolves aroung an estate's caretaker who is being forcefully retired, his young daughter, and a man who has been hired as the new caretaker. There are also leprechauns who grant wishes.

This is a worthy film, which addresses important issues in a very entertaining fashion. The dominant theme is that of marrying a person from out of one's town. The underlying unspoken concern is that of inbreeding, which should be avoided. The local bachelors are depicted as either morally deficient or as weak. The ideal suitor comes from a big city, but the film makes clear the commonality of culture between him and the girl. This is the principle of the Nation State, which allows people of various places to mix, but with a very definite territorial delimitation. He is an outsider, but not a foreigner. There is also the question of the "little people", which hint strongly at an allegorical representation of Capitalism, what with pots of gold, and wish granting which is never realized. But this is a benign view of Capitalism, of which deception is a component, but destructiveness is not.

Rating: 63

Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre (1959)

Based on the novel 'L'affaire Saint-Fiacre' by Georges Simenon, first published in 1932.

An old woman dies of a provoked heart attack in a small town. Maigret, who happens to have been born and raised in that town, returns there to investigate the affair. He interviews the various persons associated with the deceased woman, amongst which are the local priest, the estate manager, the victim's secretary and lover, the victim's son, etc.

The story is absorbing, and the small town atmosphere is well captured. All details are very professionally carried out, except the ones concerning the plot resolution. Here, the rule that says that half-baked explanations are quite enough, given that viewers tend to overlook its flaws, applies. But an explanation that leaves unexplained things is no explanation at all. Anyway, it works, I guess.

Rating: 56

Short Cuts (1993)

Third viewing; previously viewed on April 20, 1994 and on June 1, 1995.

Several groups of characters in Los Angeles which inhabit different circles but whose trajectories intersect. A newscaster and his wife whose son is hit by a car. A doctor and his wife who have a conjugal crisis of sorts. A group of friends who go fishing. A womanizing cop and his wife. A phone sex worker who is married to a pool cleaner. A make up artist and his wife. A nightclub singer and her cellist daughter. A limo driver and his bartender wife.

It somehow failed to inspire the same amount of awe as it did in my previous viewings. I still like it, but for some reason I suspect in my previous viewings I was under some kind of spell which had little to do with the actual film qualities. The story about the injured kid may have drowned the other, less emotional segments somewhat, then. That didn't happen in this viewing, and what I got was a more balanced perception of the movie in its entirety. Its literariness stood out a little more flagrantly. I think this is more a situation-based film than a character-based one. There isn't an extreme concern about getting the psychology right. These are not necessarily real people. And the situations are more or less what most people expect from a city like Los Angeles. In those terms, it is a very good movie.

Rating: 75 (down from 97)

War Requiem (1989)

Second viewing; first viewed on October 31, 1989.

Based on the oratorio composed by Benjamin Britten, with words from traditional Latin texts and poems by Wilfred Owen; it was first performed on May 30, 1962.

The title says it all. The setting is World War I.

I was not so sure about this film on my first viewing, but I can say I am pretty sure now that I do not like it. I am most puzzled by the lack of affinity between the musical style and the visual style. The former's solemnity invites meditation and pause; the latter's collage frenzy invites only fatigue and nervousness.

Rating: 31 (unchanged)

David Copperfield (1969)

England, the nineteenth century. David Copperfield loses his father, and his mother remarries to a cruel man who places young David in a boarding school, and, when David's mother dies, makes him work for a living. He then flees to an aunt's house and many persons cross his path as he grows up to become a renowned novelist.

Although with several great performances (Moody and Richardson are excellent as, respectively, Heep and Micawber), I found this adaptation bland and unengaging. Perhaps the flash-back structure, which ellides the connection between the episodes, is guilty for this; perhaps some people will find it interesting and original.

Rating: 50

O pagador de promessas (1962)

Third viewing; previously viewed on January 5, 1987 and January 25, 1987.

U.S. title: The Given Word
More faithful title translation: The Keeper of Promises

A humble peasant has made a vow to Saint Barbara that he would ascend the stairs of the town church carrying a cross on his shoulders, if the saint interceded in favor of his donkey who was ill. The accomplishment of the task he has imposed on himself will prove harder than he anticipated, as the church's priest has some objections regarding the way in which the poor man's pledge was made.

This is a story which tackles a personal conflict which is, at bottom, about the maintenance of the power structure of society. Several instances of this power structure are put in evidence: Hegemonic Religion vs. Popular Religion, Husband vs. Wife, Bosses of the Press vs. Common Journalist, Pimp vs. Prostitute, Landowner vs. Rural Worker, City vs. Country, and perhaps others that I can't think of right now. Admittedly, there is a certain schematism about the whole procedure which seems a little forced. My perception is that the reality of Brazil was always slightly different from the Marxist-oriented analysis which is offered here, and has since departed even farther. Most conspicuous among the departures, the Catholic Church's worst enemy today is not Candomblé (the African-rooted religion which is mostly followed by the descendants of slaves), but Evangelical Christians. In short, I didn't find it as gripping now as I did on my previous viewings, but it still gave me a certain amount of pleasure.

Rating: 67 (down from 88)

Rico ri à toa (1957)

A poor taxi driver receives the news that his brother died leaving him a fortune. His bossy wife is thrilled by the prospect of becoming part of "high society". But in reality this is all a plot concocted by a gang of bank robbers with the purpose of incriminating the poor man and thus deviating attention from them.

The poor worker who becomes rich without expecting it and comes to prefer the life of poverty to the new one is surely an allegory of Brazil, a country which shuns every opportunity to become a successful one by first world's standards. It would appear that we are happier as a complete mess where financial straits and out of control violence are permanent features of national life. The fact is, it is not everyone who can bear the responsibility which comes with affluence. It is a little amazing that so many films of the period have sudden riches as a plot point -- in the same year of 1957 there was A Baronesa Transviada, for example. Anyway, the bottom line is that this is a poor cinematic spectacle, with very obvious humor and songs which will not imprint indelible marks in one's memory. A somewhat more generous appraisal than mine may be found in this well-written review.

Rating: 31