The Martian Chronicles (1980)

 This is a delayed logging.

Mini-series in three episodes:
(1) The Expeditions (viewed on May 24, 2020)
(2) The Settlers (viewed on May 25, 2020)
(3) The Martians (viewed on May 27, 2020)

Previously viewed in an abridged version on June 30, 1991.

IMDB shorter summary: "In the 21st century, Earth begins the colonization of Mars. However, things do not go as planned, at first due to the hostile Martian natives and later because of the self-destructive Earthmen."

Despite having better than average production values for a TV mini-series, I couldn't bring myself to like this, mainly due to my natural antipathy towards its literary author. I don't consider him a real science-fiction writer, seeing as his writing is guided mostly by his sentimental obsessions without much (or perhaps any) regards to real scientific or even political issues. The time lapse between my viewing and now makes it impossible for me to deepen my analysis.

Rating: 32 (up from 17, but not really comparable since I saw two different versions)

Golf (1922)

 Second viewing; previously viewed (but not reviewed) on February 19, 2020.

*spoilers below*

A series of disasters and conflicts involving golf players. The central character this time is not the girl's boyfriend, but rather her brother. There are two suitors, one a plumpish guy who is reciprocated by the girl, and the other an even plumper one who is not reciprocated by her. The protagonist incurs in the plumper guy's wrath by playing golf upstairs while the other one is dining below. A whole in the floor is made to that purpose, causing the ball to fall on the downstairs dweller's soup. He tries to avenge himself later by inserting nitroglicerine inside his enemy's golf balls, but it hits an obnoxious player instead. In between those episodes there is, among other incidents, a fight with a gopher who keeps stealing the ball and even steals the protagonist's gun -- and fires it!

Unremarkable yet mildly pleasant slapstick comedy.

Rating: 43

La danse de mort (1948)

 A captain lives with his embittered wife and their daughter in an island where he is the commander of a military prison. The arrival of a physician who is an old friend of the couple shakes the already fragile foundations of their marriage. There is also a young prisoner who is summoned to work as a servant at the captain's house, and with whom the captain's daughter falls in love.

Interesting drama based on a theater play. The excellent cast is another great asset of the movie, which is never boring and manages to convey a claustrophobic atmosphere throughout its duration.

Rating: 54

Scamps and Scandals (1919)

Second viewing; previously viewed (but not reviewed) on February 20, 2020.

A guy wakes up with the telephone ringing. He'd given a party the night before and now he has a hangover and his house is in a state of disarray. His girl is on the phone. Her father disapproves of her boyfriend and makes her hang up. The guy then gets mixed in a series of unlucky incidents, some of them outdoors and some indoors, involving the girl's father, the police, and the girl's other suitor. There is a car chase in the middle section and the last act happens at the wedding ceremony which is about to be celebrated between her and her other suitor.

Slapstick comedy featuring some clichés of the genre and no apparent distinctive plot point or environment. Some continuity jumps and the rather abrupt ending makes one wonder whether some parts were missing.

Rating: 40

Passing the Buck (1919)

Second viewing; previously viewed (but not reviewed) on February 20, 2020.

Set at a hotel, the plot revolves around a suitcase full of jewels. A bunch of turbaned thieves try to steal it and the protagonist, who is apparently the hotel detective, endeavors to stop them from achieving their goal. Other characters are a guest couple who are also thieves, a janitor, a desk clerk, a cook, and a cat.

Poorly inspired slapstick, the highlights of which are the episode with a roasted chicken and the one on top of a building.

Rating: 35 (down from 45)

The Midnight Cabaret (1923)

Second viewing; previously viewed (but not reviewed) on February 20, 2020.

A series of disasters and conflicts arise inside a cabaret. A frog jumps into a customer's dish, some bandits living upstairs from the cabaret steal food through a hole in the floor, older customers try to seduce a young dancer who is the protagonist's girlfriend, the protagonist splatters ink into a customer's face when he tries to communicate through a tube on the wall with his dancer girlfriend, a loud customer allies with the bandits and they start a bomb attack, etc.

Slapstick of a typical kind.

Rating: 37

The Gown Shop (1923)

Second viewing; previously viewed without a subsequent review on February 20, 2020.

The film revolves around a series of accidents involving the gown shop's employees, the manager, and a few clients. The protagonist is a salesman at the shop who gets in conflict with his boss and with another employee. The incidents involve ladders, a pond with fishes and even a small alligator, a revolving door, a clothes iron, etc.

Routine example of the slapstick genre, with frantic action and the use of an indoor space, its configuration and objects as instruments of disaster.

Rating: 35

Bears and Bad Men (1918)

Second viewing; previously viewed on February 21, 2020, but not reviewed.

The characters are two feuding rural families, some bears, a couple of actors, a newcomer who is bad at fishing. The protagonist spends the movie either running from the rival family's shots or running from the bears. In the last section he and the newcomer climb a hill and are chased by the bears.

The protagonist's relation to the members of his family is a little obscure. At first I thought he was the wife's brother, but IMDB gives him the same last name as the woman's husband. It seems he must be the couple's son, though he seems to be roughly the same age as them. The bears seem to pose no threat to humans: all they do when they get near one is lick him. Anyway, this is not a memorable piece of slapstick, but it has some imaginative sequences and is overall watchable.

Rating: 43

Horseshoes (1923)

 Second viewing; previously viewed on February 21, 2020 (unreviewed)

A boxing champion offers a prize to anyone who can withstand one minute fighting him without being knocked down. A guy wins the prize by putting horseshoes inside his gloves. A second act has our (anti)-hero meeting the boxer in a pool hall. In the third act there is a car chase.

Run-of-the-mill slapstick with the usual elements of the genre and nothing extraordinary about it.

Rating:34

Kid Speed (1924)

 Second viewing; previously viewed on February 22, 2020 (and not reviewed then).

A beautiful woman's father promises her hand to the man who wins an automobile race. Two rivals covet that prize: a thin man and a fat one. Prior to the race, the thin man loses control of his car, provoking a series of disasters. He then has a fight with his rival. The race occupies the last part of the movie, with the fat contestant trying to exclude his rival by dishonest means.

Routine slapstick which is not hard to watch and has some well filmed car sequences.

Rating: 37

Lightning Love (1923)

Second viewing; previously viewed on February 22, 2020 (and unreviewed at that occasion); both viewings were of the same incomplete version (I don't know whether a complete version of this film still exists)

Two rivals are visiting a young lady. One is thin, the other is fat. The other characters are the lady's father, who is ill with gout, a servant, a dog and a monkey. There is a storm which shakes and moves the house.

Apparently all that was missing from the version I saw was the mid-section, since the film seems to begin and end in the right place, but there is a jump in continuity in the middle. 

This is an utterly forgettable yet watchable slapstick comedy.

Rating: 32

Greater Love Hath No Man (1911)

 This is a delayed posting; I watched this film on December 7, 2020.

Set at a mining town, this revolves about a love triangle amidst a miners' riot. The details of the plot may be read at IMDB.

Though its details are not so vivid in my memory, I recall I didn't like this movie. It's a tale of sacrifice, with some action and a desert chase, if I remember correctly.

Rating: 20

The Girl in the Arm-Chair (1912)

This is a delayed posting; I watched this movie on December 7, 2020.

This about a young man who rejects a woman. Later, his addiction to gambling leads him to commit an embarassing act. The rest of the plot is at the IMDB page.

Though I didn't remember its details, a quick glance at IMDB's detailed summary was enough to refresh my memory and confirm that this film has a very questionable morality. I really didn't like it, except perhaps as a window to another era's ideology.

Rating: 15

Making an American Citizen (1912)

This is a delayed posting; I have watched this film on December 7, 2020.

I think this IMDB summary is accurate enough: "A recent immigrant learns several hard lessons about how husbands in America are expected to behave."

I remember not having liked this film, but cannot elaborate, mostly due to not having that viewing experience fresh in my memory.

Rating: 23

Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913)

This is a delayed posting. I watched this film on December 8, 2020.

I think this IMDB synopsis is accurate enough: "A man must marry by noon or lose his inheritance. It's 11:50 a.m. and he can't find his fiancée."

I remember not having liked this film, but the exact reasons are lost in oblivion.

Rating: 14

Discontent (1916)

 This is a delayed posting; I watched this film on December 8, 2020.

An old man living in a home for war veterans decides to move in with his relatives, but he is a divisive and chronically dissatisfied character and he eventually becomes intolerable to everyone around him.

This is sort of a moral tale, and I remember not finding it entirely uninteresting.

Rating: 38

The City Slicker (1918)

 This is a delayed posting. I watched this film on December 27, 2020.

The titular character employs himself at a small hotel and modernizes it, introducing some gadgets such as retractable beds, etc. There is also a love interest and a violent rival.

I wish I had done a review of this film immediately after I watched it. All I can say after 4 months is that I enjoyed it moderately.

Rating: 55

Kino-glaz (1924)

 Alternative spelling of the title: Kinoglaz

English title: Kino Eye

Documentary set in the Soviet Union. It mostly centers on the so-called Pioneers, who were children who served the Soviet regime mostly by spreading government propaganda and health campaigns and doing charity work; there are segments with other themes, .e.g., a depiction of a lunatic asylum, etc.

Mildly interesting documentary with some avant-garde affectations which consist in playing some sequences in reverse. The asylum segment is probably the most curious one.

Rating: 43

Staroye i novoye (1929)

 Alternative Russian title: Generalnaya liniya

English titles: Old and New; The General Line

In early 20th-century Russia, a poor farmer woman endeavors to form a cooperative. She must fight the State's unresponsiveness, the lack of cohesion and discipline of other poor farmers, the opposition of rich farmers, and the inclemency of the weather.

The hardships of rural life have been the subject of great movies, but this is not one of them. It has some striking imagery, but its narrative virtues are scant. Being a propaganda piece for the Soviet Union, one wouldn't expect a balanced approach from it, but even for a propaganda piece this is abusively didactic. The funny thing is: despite all that, I just do not think it is effective as propaganda. The poor are depicted in such a way that one simply cannot believe that they could be successful at farming. Unfortunately, reality would prove that the hard way, and the Soviet collectivization process resulted in massacres and starvation.

There is more than one version of this film. I have watched the version entitled Old and New; there is also a version entitled The General Line; with the help of a book, I located the parts which were supposed to differ and watched them; the differences were small, except for the ending which is very different in the two versions.

Rating: 34

Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov (1924)

 English title: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks

An American executive travels to the Soviet Union. He takes a bodyguard dressed in full cowboy outfit with him. From U.S. magazines he had acquired the notion that the bolsheviks were violent and dangerous. In the Soviet Union he falls prey to a gang of hoodlums who stage a false kidnapping in order to extort money from him.

Pretty awful propagandistic comedy which has absolutely no political insight and fails miserably even as mere slapstick. The main actress looks exactly like (or is made here to look exactly like, perhaps) Olive Oyl, the character who appeared in 1919 in the comic strip Thimble Theatre.

Rating: 20

La belle américaine (1961)

 English titles: The American Beauty; What a Chassis

*spoilers ahead*

A factory worker (Marcel) is thinking of buying a motorcycle from a friend, but instead buys an expensive car from a rich widow for a ridiculously low price (she is avenging herself on his late husband's mistress to whom the car had been bequeathed). Marcel sees his life suffer a complete turnaround after the purchase. His boss feels humiliated and fires him. Next he falls victim of the swindled mistress who wants him to sell her the car. She locks him in the trunk and, after a while, abandons him and the car in a deserted road. She then warns Marcel's wife who comes to his rescue. After many failed attempts to get the trunk open, he is saved by a thief who breaks it open and runs when he sees there is someone inside. Marcel then takes the car to a service station but instead of putting gas in it they wash it and get Marcel and the car completely soaked.  At a VIP party to where he is led by a series of traffic incidents, he is then mistaken for an important person and meets the Secretary of Commerce. After that, he loses the car after he parks it and forgets to set the brakes on. The car slides on its own until it enters a barge which takes off. It is eventually found, but Marcel gets in yet more trouble when he surprises an activist in the act of painting some anti-American words on the car. The police arrives and takes Marcel by mistake thinking he is the one doing the painting. Marcel goes to prison and they only set him free when his wife arrives with a letter from the Secretary of Commerce. At home, a final disaster happens when Marcel's wife is trying to move the car but unwittingly sets it in reverse, thus destroying her brother's ice cream stand. Marcel then has an idea: he converts his car into an ice cream stand. The film ends at a horse race where Marcel is selling ice cream from his converted car. He decides to buy his friend's motorcycle when he has made enough money from his ice cream business.

*end of spoilers*

Agreeable comedy with a bland type of humor and enough incidents to make it entertaining. It's very well done in terms of staging and acting, and, though there is nothing very deep or groundbreaking about it, its depiction of a certain working class milieu at a certain time is certainly of some sociological value.

Rating: 51

Conte d'été (1996)

 English title: A Summer's Tale

Gaspard is spending his vacations at the beach. He expects to meet Léna with whom he had struck a fragile relationship a while ago and who went on a trip to Spain. He then meets Margot, an ethnologist working a summer job as a waitress at her aunt's restaurant. They become close friends. Since Léna does not appear to be coming to meet him, Gaspard starts to date another girl he met through Margot.

Story of a guy who gets in some trouble over his romantic affairs. As was his use in some of his past movies, the author could have chosen a proverb to illustrate this story, say "The weak man is like a leaf in the wind" or something like that. The succession of events, punctuated by some long stretches of dialogue, is competently crafted but, while not exactly disagreeable to watch, rather banal in essence, resembling a soap opera in style. The encounter of the protagonist with his awaited girlfriend, supposed to be the film's climactic point, was badly handled, with the girl's character coming across as somewhat caricatural. It's hard for the viewer to understand how she could arouse any man's passion.

Rating: 45

Manina...la fille sans voile (1952)

 English titles: The Girl in the Bikini; The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

A student hears about a Phoenician sunken ship containing a treasure; coincidentally, he had found a jug while diving at the same spot where that ship supposedly sunk. He makes a deal with a cigarette smuggler to take him by boat to that place so that he can search for the treasure. He reencounters a girl he had met on his previous visit, and falls in love with her.

Awful adventure-cum-romance story which is only made watchable by the lovely landscapes of Corsica and Tangiers, its pretty (though here incompetent) leading actress, and one slightly amusing sequence in a classroom.

Rating: 21

My Six Convicts (1952)

 A psychologist leads a pioneering study among inmates of a big prison, measuring IQs and assessing skills. He has to use prisoners as assistants, and eventually wins their confidence. An escape plan puts him in danger.

Second-rate prison drama, with surprisingly little exploration of the actual experiment being performed. The plot focuses instead in the relationship between the psychologist and the inmates. The script is very unrealistic in a juvenile way. Certain details intrigued me, but since I don't know the prison rules which were applied in that place and time, I can't make an informed judgement. For example, there is a subplot in which an elaborate plan is put in action to smuggle the wife of an inmate into the prison so they can see each other. I wonder why she couldn't have just visited him. Weren't visits allowed? Anyway it's a poor film, both as entertainment and as a depiction of prisons.

Rating: 31

Fric-Frac (1939)

 An employee (Marcel) at a jewelry store meets two thieves -- a man (Jo) and a woman (Loulou) -- at the races. Marcel feels attracted toward Loulou and she in turn thinks he may somehow be useful to them in a robbery of the jewelry store. It so happens that the jewelry store's owner's daughter has her mind set on marrying Marcel.

Comedy which depicts the Parisian underworld. Its excellent cast enlivens a serviceable but otherwise not especially remarkable script. The opening sequence is set during a motor-paced racing event. It's funny that that sport exists since the 19th century and I had never even heard of it.

Rating: 53

Anzio (1968)

 Italian title: Lo sbarco di Anzio

A war correspondent follows the assault on Anzio in Italy during World War II. He goes through several adventures, first with a battalion, then with a small group of soldiers who see their outfit be destroyed.

Mildly entertaining war drama which according to some IMDB user reviews departs considerably from the real events it purports to depict. The script, especially the dialogue, is amusing in a style that was customary in Italian cheap movies of that era. In fact, the screenplay (based on a novel) is attributed to an English guy, but some Italian names are credited with the "adaptation". It is unclear who did the original work, the English guy or the Italian ones. One actor (Falk) is said to have written his own lines, and his lines are equally amusing, in that same style of the rest of the movie. In the latter part of the movie, there are pseudo-philosophical asides from the protagonist about man's motives for making war; they are very amusing, in the same manner of the rest of the movie.

Rating: 39

Nightfall (1956)

 The protagonist is chased by two criminals and watched by an insurance investigator. They want a suitcase full of money stolen from a bank by those two criminals. Through flashbacks we are told how the protagonist ended up with that suitcase. He was camping with a friend when the two criminals suffered a car accident in the vicinity.

The plot, especially in what regards the characters' behavior, does not make much sense, and the film's watchability is due primarily to location shooting in some interesting locales, both urban and rural.

Rating: 34

Hardcore (1979)

*mild spoilers ahead*

The young daughter of a businessman disappears, and he hires a detective to look for her. The detective discovers that she was in a pornographic movie, and shows it to the girl's father, who is shocked. The detective continues his search, but is eventually dismissed due to a lack of results, after which the father himself sets out to find his missing daughter. He begins to investigate the underworld of pornography, and, having obtained some photos of the other actors from the film in which his daughter appeared, he starts looking for those people in the hopes some of them can provide some information about his daughter's whereabouts. He persuades a prostitute to help him in his quest, in exchange for a pay.

Despite its potentially shocking subject matter, this film failed to ellicit any kind of emotion in me. The progression of the plot is quite predictable, and the dialogue and characters are not very interesting. It seems to have been thoughtfully written, in regards to the social and psychological issues which it tackles, and which are not devoid of interest in themselves, but somehow the end result just does not come across as particularly realistic or insightful.

Rating: 32

Julietta (1953)

*spoilers ahead* 

A young woman (Julietta) is engaged to be married to a prince (Hector). This is the end of her seaside vacation, which she is spending in the company of her mother and her sister. They are bound for Paris, where the prince awaits them. She is not eager to meet him, because she doesn't love him. At an intermediary stop, a passenger (André) gets off, but forgets his cigarette case. Julietta notices the forgotten object, and tries to restore it to its owner. She reaches him at the station, but the train leaves without her. André now must find a place for her to stay until she can catch the next train in the following day. The problem is that, due to a convention, all the hotels are full. So, Julietta must stay with André in his big mansion. This will lead to further complications as André brings his fiancée (Rosie) to spend the night with him in his mansion. André hides Julietta in the attic. Julietta becomes enamoured of André, and does not make things easy for him while she is there. An interesting coincidence which spices things up is that Rosie is best friends with Hector, and invites him to have dinner with them at the mansion. Of course, in the end, André falls in love with Julietta, and Rosie finds in Hector her ideal man. 

Romantic comedy which feels a little antiquated today, but probably was less so in 1953. The goings-on are a bit repetitive, with the title character provoking a series of troubles for the male protagonist, and the latter having to come with implausible excuses for his strange behavior. Overall, a rather weak film. Though not exactly disagreeable to watch, it is not really interesting in any way.

Rating: 31

Le magot de Josefa (1963)

English title: Josefa's Loot

*spoilers ahead*

 A young poet (Justin) has a compositional partnership with an older musician (Pierre). Justin employs Pierre in a scheme to defraud Justin's mother (Josefa) of money. Pierre travels to the small town where Josefa lives and owns a grocery store cum bar, and tells her that Justin has bought a car from him with a bad cheque, and then wrecked the car in an accident. Josefa refuses to compensate for her son's misdeed, even after Pierre threatens to send Justin to jail. It so happens that Josefa, an Italian immigrant widow who had previously lived in the U.S.A, is not the rich person she pretends to be. Pierre learns that the town's mayor, whom he had seen harassing Josefa for her attention, is Justin's biological father and, after his failure to extort the money from Josefa, he tries his luck with the mayor. Concurrently to all that, Josefa has some troubles with a group of noisy customers who on top of their bad behavior will not pay her. During her absence from the bar premises, those customers, emboldened by some reckless words spoken by the mayor in a moment of anger, break into the building and accidentally set it on fire. Everything is finally settled after Pierre threatens to bring the mayor to justice on the count of incitement to disorder. The mayor pays for Josefa's destroyed property and Josefa leaves town with Pierre. The two are in very good terms with each other.

Comedy which depicts some aspects of life in a small town in France. The leading actress is very funny in this; she finally found a comedic outlet for her indefectible portrayal of a stereotypical Italian woman. The plot becomes somewhat convoluted (and implausible) when the female protagonist's past life  is told verbally in a long exposition, but aside from that the film flows well. One might also question the film's ultimate point: it seems to side with Parisian crooks over small town people, which it paints as bigoted and morally lax. Overall, however, the humor is gentle and there are some really good sequences, e.g., the priest dancing the tango at the bar, the gravedigger and Pierre talking at the graveyard, Pierre and Josefa in the church talking and listening to his song, etc.

Rating: 56

A Bullet Is Waiting (1954)

 A plane carrying a sheriff and his prisoner crashes and due to circumstances they have to take refuge at a house where a young woman lives with her father, who is away.

As one IMDB user (rudy-30) noticed, this is apparently inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. However, 'inspired by' does not make this an inspired script, and what we get are old clichés about the indefectible duo comprised of evil law enforcer and his maladjusted victim, who is really the better man. There is also the inevitable romance. A curious thing about the movie is that it plays exactly like a Western, except for modern utilities like airplanes and automobiles.

Rating: 36

Knock on Any Door (1949)

 After a holdup in a bar, a cop is killed by the robber. A young man with a criminal past is recognized by witnesses, but claims innocence. He turns to a lawyer who used to be his friend. The lawyer tells the jury the history of hardships the defendant has endured.

Liberal propaganda which resembles in plot You Only Live Once (the scene where an employer bullies the protagonist until he fires him is nearly identical in the two films). Knock on Any Door has some amusing underworld characters and the plot moves fast enough to keep one from getting too bored. Its social message is noble and to a certain extent pertinent, but it's delivered with such an amount of exaggeration that it falls flat. Take the sequence I mentioned earlier, for example: a sadistic employer driving his employee mad with anger. It's either unrealistic or something that the government would have no control over, unless it paid every former criminal a salary for not working at all.

Rating: 45

The Last Hurrah (1958)

 Frank, an experienced politician, is running for reelection as mayor of an important city. The local newspaper owner has a grudge against him, and is backing a newcomer rival. Frank turns the funeral of an impopular man into a campaign event. He then tricks a banker into making a loan to a housing project.

Dramatic comedy which pits an Irish-descended populist politician against the dark forces of old elites. Although its basic ideology is rooted in liberal democracy, what the film shows is how that system is inherently inefficient, and the only way to make it work minimally is by circumventing rules through cunning or deceit. Aside from that, the paradox which the film exposes is that its protagonist is advanced in political ideas yet backward in political methods, whereas his antagonists are the opposite: reactionary in political ideas yet progressivist in political methods. The film's purported aim is to depict the end of an era in politics. The humor is tame, the drama is sentimental, the analysis is superficial.

Rating: 46

Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

*spoilers ahead*

 Intelligent apes live in harmony with humans, but Aldo, a militaristic gorilla, wants to seize power from Caesar, the chimpanzee leader. Caesar is told by MacDonald, a human, that there are tapes preserved with footage of Caesar's parents, so they -- plus Virgil, the genius organgutan -- go on an expedition to the city's ruins. Unfriendly humans still inhabit the ruins, and detect the invaders, who escape after playing the tape. The ruin-dwelling humans decide to locate the ape community and destroy it.

This is the conclusion of the saga, exploring mainly the conflicts between pacifist and warlike apes in a primitive community setting. A minor part of the movie is set in the radiation-contaminated ruins of the human city, where there is a similar conflict between pacifist and warlike humans. As the other sequels, it has some mildly entertaining action-filled plot, with a very thin layer of ideas coating it.

Rating: 31

Son of Paleface (1952)

 The son of a Western icon returns to collect his father's inheritance. He gets involved with a saloon singer who is actually a stagecoach robber. A federal agent is acting undercover as a singer with the aim of identifying and arresting the robber gang.

Comedy which exaggerates in practically every department: the main actor's histrionics, the use of one-liners (some of which I admittedly didn't catch), the cartoon-like visual effects, and the number of tedious musical numbers. While not exactly an unbearable movie, it can become slightly annoying for some of the time, and is seldom truly entertaining.

Rating: 35

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

 The baby chimpanzee whose parents were travelers from the future has grown, and, after an incident with the police, is chased by the authorities who think he spells doom for mankind. He starts an underground ape movement to take the power from the humans.

As the preceding films in this franchise, this one is heavily invested in action and spectacle but is actually not very rich in ideas. The plot does not make much sense: the apes at once evolved too rapidly since the previous movie, and did not evolve enough for taking over the planet. America in the early seventies was very much obsessed with revolutions and riots, and this film explores that theme in a very elementary way with apes as the oppressed class. 

Rating: 31

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

 In a future where apes are intelligent and humans are dumb animals, two simian scientists travel back in time fleeing a war. Their ship regresses to our times, and its passengers are imprisoned by the humans.

Tedious sequel which explores the ethical dilemmas posed by time travel and other types of ethical dilemmas, for example, is it ok to lie when one doesn't know whether the truth would be understood? 

Rating: 31

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

*possible spoilers* 

A second ship is sent in search of some astronauts who had been sent into the future, and lands in the same ape-ruled place and time. This time the apes set out to explore the forbidden zone. What they find there will blow your mind.

This is the first of four sequels. It explores the points left open in the end of the first movie. The first half is basically just a lot of action. In the second half, we are introduced to a human community, more evolved culturally than the savages we saw in the first movie, who lives underground and practices some weird religious cult. Discussions about atomic power and doomsday ensue. It's not exactly a philosophically deep movie, and might provoke laughter fits if one is in a specially hilarious mood. The visuals of the movie, on the other hand, are just as impressive as those of its predecessor.

Rating: 31

Anna Boleyn (1920)

U.S. title: Deception 

King Henry VIII wanted a male heir. His first wife didn't produce one. He broke with Catholicism and divorced her to marry the title character, an aristocrat.

Historical drama which drags at certain points. It has some good moments, though, and the sets and costumes are impressive. The film has very little in the way of historical analysis or insight, but as a drama of superficial human passions it is well-made.

Rating: 55

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Second viewing; previously viewed on an unremembered date, earlier than 1986.

A team of astronauts are on an experimental space journey whose purpose is to prove that, by moving at speeds close to that of light, one travels in time into the future. They land on a place ruled by intelligent apes.

Science fiction with a provocative premise and some stunning architectural sets and special make up. The script is mediocre at best, and, in addition to its dramatic flaws, has plot holes that are hard to swallow (are we really supposed to believe that no one in this film finds it strange that people supposedly on different planets speak the same language?). Films reflecting the fear of nuclear holocaust were very popular throughout the Cold War; after that, the fad sort of fizzled out.

Rating: 50 (down from 63) 

The Paleface (1948)

 Second viewing, and the first complete one; previously viewed on January 19, 1989, without the beginning

Calamity Jane is offered a pardon in exchange of working as a government agent. Her assignment is to find out who is selling guns to a tribe of Native Americans. She tricks a dentist into marrying her in order to pose as an innocent wife in a wagon caravan.

Comedy which is a little uneven, but delivers enough comic moments, either in the form of visual gags or through dialogue. Two basic situations get repeated throughout the movie: 'Painless' tries to make love to Jane, but is frustrated, either through cunning or through violence; and 'Painless' gets credit for some prowess made by Jane. Sometimes this gets a little monotonous, but overall the film acquits itself well enough. The central duo of actors is good, and work well together. 

Rating: 56 (down from 62)

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

During World War II, an American soldier (Kelly) stationed in France learns, while interrogating a German prisoner, that there are 14,000 gold bullions being stored at a bank in Clermont, behind enemy lines. Kelly convinces his platoon mates to join him in an attempt to rob that bank.

War comedy which entertains in a crude, vulgar manner. Its mocking tone is certainly in tune with the spirit of the times. Perhaps the overall insatisfaction with the Vietnam war was being channeled into productions which made fun of other wars, like WWII here, and the Korean war in M*A*S*H. The sheer number of characters in Kelly's Heroes, mostly in very small parts, and each with his peculiarities, is impressive. Although the film is somewhat longer than the average film, I suspect it wouldn't suffer by the inclusion of the deleted scenes, as detailed in its Wikipedia page. Incidentally, that page has some interesting details about the real-life affair which inspired this movie:

Kelly's Heroes - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

Rating: 51

L'âge ingrat (1964)

 English title: That Tender Age

Marie and Antoine are planning to get married, and Marie's parents accept the invitation to spend their familial vacation as a guest of Antoine's parents in their seaside hometown. Their respective fathers strike up a friendship, interspersed with occasional bouts of mutual animosity. Things turn for the worse when the two lovebirds quarrel over a former suitor of hers.

Dramatic comedy. It's mainly about generation differences, but also about North-South human differences. It's all simplified for dramatic effect, and doesn't go very deep into any particular issue. The older generation gets more interesting characters and dialogue than the younger one. The ending is outwardly an optimistic one, but anyone with some real life experience would seriously doubt that the young couple's marriage could last more than a few years.

Rating: 40

The Long Gray Line (1955)

 An immigrant from Ireland goes to West Point. He starts out as an employee, but then enlists and spends the rest of his life there as a non-commissioned officer, mostly working as an athletic instructor. He marries, brings his father from Ireland, goes through two world wars, etc.

This film has been compared to Goodbye, Mr. Chips by some reviewers. The main difference between the two films is that the protagonist here does not seem to have anything remarkable about him. He does not seem to be a bad person, but that's as far as his qualities go. So, the only reason he becomes an object of affection is because, being a fixture of the place where he lives, a sentimental value is attached to him. This is a film with a void as a center. It becomes a film about West Point, really, but a rather trivial one. The amazing thing is that the leading actor gives what is probably the best performance of his career playing this nobody.

Rating: 31

Adorables créatures (1952)

 English title: Adorable Creatures

On his wedding day, a young man recollects his past adventures with three women. The first one is married and will not leave her husband; the second one is a money-grubber; the third one is a widow millionairess devoted to charity events. As he goes through those relationships, his feelings towards his neighbor's daughter (shown at the beginning as the woman he marries) grows stronger.

While not exactly an earth-shattering masterpiece, this film deserves more recognition than it has. It is splendidly directed, and has a very decent screenplay. It is structured as an episodic film, with each of the protagonist's women being the center of one episode. The first one is possibly not as good as the two following it. This film has been accused of being misogynistic; well, that is the whole point of the movie, made explicit already in its ironic title. 

Rating: 55

The Night of the Generals (1967)

 During World War II, a series of murders of prostitutes happen at various European cities where some German generals are staying. A German inspector is obsessed with finding the murderer. The plot to kill Hitler interferes with his quest.

Convoluted melodrama which is a mix of war drama and whodunit. It's all very silly, as many commenters have pointed out, but it looks good and entertains to a moderate degree, as long as one is prepared to spend more than two hours being thus entertained.

Rating: 44

Fuzileiro do Amor (1956)

 José Ambrósio enlists in the Marines (actually, their Brazilian counterpart) in order to be accepted by his girlfriend's father, who is himself a retired marine. Since José Ambrósio is physically unfit and clumsy, he is the constant butt of jokes of his comrades and a victim of harassment by his sergeant. By a strange coincidence, his identical twin is also a military who is stationed nearby. That causes some confusion.

Very unoriginal comedy with some musical numbers thrown in for good measure. As the initial plot concerning an unfit recruit didn't provide enough material for a full-length film, they inserted the twin subplot which completely diverts the course of the movie.

Rating: 31

La dénonciation (1962)

 U.S. titles: The Immoral Moment; The Denunciation

A film producer who had been a Resistance fighter unexpectedly gets involved as a witness in the murder case of a righwing activist. The event, and the ensuing interviews with the police, bring back memories of the war, when, as a prisoner of the Germans, he revealed secrets under torture. He sees his current predicament as a chance of redeeming himself for his hidden past.

This pretentious drama is not too hard to watch, thanks to the nicely flowing narrative and the well written dialogue. Upon deeper examination, one would have to object to the artificiality of its plot and the implausibility of its characters.

Rating: 34

Charmants garçons (1957)

 English titles: Too Many Lovers; Charming Boys

A theatrical singer and dancer finds out that her lover is married and breaks up with him. She is being courted by a businessman to whom she does not feel attracted. When she gets home, she is accosted by a thief. She goes on a vacation trip to the seaside, where she meets new men and reencounters some others.

Bland sexual comedy with a few diegetic musical numbers. It's hardly what one would call an interesting film, but it might entertain someone in a lighter mood.

Rating: 37

The Quiller Memorandum (1966)

 Second viewing; previously viewed on November 22, 1994

An agent is assigned the mission of finding out the base of a neonazi organization in West Berlin.

This is a moderately entertaining spy story, with slightly tongue-in-cheek dialogue and a slower pace than usual in this type of film. I can't find much to say about it. I liked it a little less on my previous viewing, for some unknown reason. Though the plot is not very exciting, it's very well made in every department, and I especially liked the leading actress's performance.

Rating: 50 (up from 45)

Hustle (1975)

 Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; previously viewed on November 5, 1995

A police detective is on a relationship with a whore. He is working on the case of the apparent suicide of a young woman.

I wonder how much of this film I had managed to understand on my previous viewing, seeing as the dialogue of the dubbed version is incorrectly translated at some key points -- probably due to censorship in Brazil. Well, anyhow, I was hoping to enjoy this film more this time, listening to the original audio. The fact is that it is not very enjoyable. The main problem is the terribly uninspired dialogue. By the way, at one point I presume the author must have been playing a joke on the viewer. The two cops are talking:

Belgrave: So you still think Sellers is clean?

Gaines: Yeah, I think he's clean.

Belgrave: The Summers girl admitted that Leo was the man in the photo.

Gaines: She didn't say Leo who.

Belgrave: No, she's scared of him. She's also afraid of Marty.

Considering that both cops knew Leo Sellers's face, the line "She didn't say Leo who." and the following one do not make sense. An unspoken thesis conveyed by this film seems to be that it's not a worse deal for a man to live with a whore than it is for a woman to live with a cop.

Rating: 31 (up from 21)

Hurry Sundown (1967)

Second viewing; previously viewed on March 31, 1992.

 A big company is buying land for its new plant. Two small farmers -- one white and one black -- don't want to sell their farms. This gets in the way of a local man who plans to sell his wife's estate and also work for the future company.

Anti-racist drama with stereotyped characters and melodramatic situations. While not as bad as I perceived it upon my first viewing, it is indeed poorly written and somewhat disagreeable.

Rating: 31 (up from 10)

The Last Frontier (1955)

 A fur trapper working as a scout in a Fort falls in love with a colonel's wife. When said colonel assumes the command of the Fort, he orders an suicidal attack on the Native Americans.

Western with nice landscapes. The plot is schematic and marred by an unconvincing love story. It is well filmed, though.

Rating: 35

A Lawless Street (1955)

 A marshal progressively realizes that the assassination attempts against him are not a simple case of revenge. Two of the town's citizens see him as an obstacle in a get-rich-quick scheme of theirs.

The main plot idea for this movie must be an extremely common one: this is the third movie I saw only this year which uses it! Basically, there is a mine and some crooked (though apparently law abiding) citizens need to get rid of some people in order to cash in on the upcoming boom. In this one, the writers apparently collected every single Western cliché into a single movie. But it has some degree of watchability, thanks to a well organized script and a decent execution.

Rating: 36

7th Cavalry (1956)

 An officer returning to the Fort where he is stationed after he had been away fetching his bride-to-be discovers that most of the soldiers in the Fort are dead after a battle with Native Americans.

This preposterous film probably couldn't be told apart from the countless TV banalities that made up the remainder of its writer's career had it not been made and released as a theatrical movie. After the fiasco at Little Big Horn, what does the new commander at Fort Lincoln decide to do? Double down on the insanity and order a detachment into Sioux territory once again, looking to bring back the dead corpses so as to give them proper funerals. Fittingly for those death obsessed wackos, they are saved from slaughter by the dead themselves. A film for those with an infinite capacity for seeing the funny side of trash.

Rating: 12

Ice Castles (1978)

 A figure skater from a small town suffers a terrible accident right when she was envisaging a glorious future.

Weak sports drama which seems to have been written in a rush, but is not badly directed. It sort of fills its dramatic void with lovely ice skating sequences. This is the most well known film made by its director, who had most of his career in TV movies and, in a nostalgic fit perhaps, remade it in 2010.

Rating: 30

Gun Fury (1953)

 A bunch of  former Confederate soldiers adhere to criminal life after the Civil War. They rob a stagecoach and kidnap a woman who was about to be married. Her fiancé then searches for her in an attempt to rescue her.

Unnoteworthy Western. Aside from a few strong lines of dialogue which provide commentary about the effects of the Civil War on the South, the film is pretty routine and cliché, though agreeable to look at and easy to watch on the whole.

Rating: 31

Signes extérieurs de richesse (1983)

 English title: Outward Signs of Wealth

A veterinarian is investigated for tax evasion. The fiscal inspector is an unmarried woman.

This film is not totally devoid of intelligence at analyzing the French middle class and its little dishonesties. The major problem I see is that it doesn't come to terms with its own cynicism, and, after a promising start, fizzles into an unconvincing romantic comedy.

Rating: 40

Lawless Range (1935)

John is sent by his father to answer a call for help by one of the latter's friends in another town. It turns out that said friend goes missing and the town is facing a problem of lack of supplies due to a series of robberies. John volunteers to bring supplies to the town with the help of a group of men.

The plot here is nearly identical to that of Blue Steel, which had the same main actor and which I reviewed a few days ago. Again, there is a distinguished citizen who is acting in cahoots with bandits to expel a town's inhabitants in order to get hold of the gold which lies in the town's underground. And once again the protagonist offers to bring supplies to the starved town. Frankly, too much of the same thing is liable to get one bored, though the film has its share of action, comic-book thrills and dubbed singing.

Rating: 32

Cours après moi... que je t'attrape (1976)

 English title: Run After Me Until I Catch You

A middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman meet through a newspaper ad and start a relationship.

Films about relationships were very fashionable from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties (Scenes from a Marriage; Modern Romance; Shoot the Moon; Best Friends; Heartburn). They are usually autobiographical to some extent and people generally like to watch them and compare them with their own experiences. This French movie is not among the most famous among them, and I think it's not among the better ones either. The situations are predictable and generally developed in a rather tame manner. The female protagonist is a bit of a neurotic, and the title seems to imply that there is an agenda behind her behavior. I'm not sure that her approach would be very effective in real life, but I confess to not having a sufficiently representative sample on which to base my assessment.

Rating: 31

The Man from Utah (1934)

 A newcomer in a small town is hired by the local marshal to pose as a rodeo contestant in order to investigate possible foul play which has occurred in previous rodeos.

Low budget Western with some interesting stock footage of rodeos. The plot is the usual comic-book nonsense one sees in such films, but is not wholly devoid of entertainment value.

Rating: 36

When the Clouds Roll By (1919)

 A man is undergoing treatment which is actually meant to drive him crazy. He meets a young woman and falls in love with her. She is already engaged and does not know that her fiancé is a crook.

Entertaining comedy which became famous on account of its dream sequences, especially the one where the protagonist walks on the ceiling. The flood sequence is also impressive. The plot is more complex than the average for films of its kind and era. The film as a whole is fairly entertaining.

Rating: 63

The Reivers (1969)

 Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; previously viewed on March 27, 1996

In 1905, an 11-year-old boy living in a small town accompanies two young men on a trip to a big city. They take the kid's grandfather's car without the latter's permission. Their first stop is at a whorehouse. Later on they take part in a horse race.

Agreeable coming-of-age story with nice cinematography and even nicer score. The acting is mostly good, and I wonder whether a good deal of the merit for that could be ascribed to able direction. I don't know exactly why I liked it a little less on my first viewing; possibly I found it bland. I can't deny that it is, but I guess not all films need to be shocking or polemical. Or maybe I was a little annoyed at what I perceived as a twisted moral message: instead of punishind a child for his wrongdoings, it's deemed better to let him live with the consequences. Well, that is tantamount to declaring family education useless. When that child grows up, the State will certainly adopt a sterner attitude should he move on to bigger infractions. I suppose that is the liberal way of thinking. There is some additional weirdness to part of the story, like the whore who continues in the profession so she can find a husband. Surely there must be a better way, but who am I to tell? Those minor annoyances aside, it made for a nice second viewing, especially because I previously watched it dubbed in Portuguese (and probably in pan-and-scan), and also because I remembered nothing of it.

Rating: 58 (up from 48)

Rocky IV (1985)

 An American boxer past his prime challenges a Soviet young boxer who killed his friend in a previous boxing match.

There is not much to say about this film. The script seems to have been written in half an hour. The more endurable scenes feature a funny robot (I wonder whether in addition to serving breakfast she writes films; it might be better than this one). The rest of the movie is mostly a series of montages scored by rock songs, and two boxing matches.

Rating: 11

Quelé do Pajeú (1970)

 English title (Australia): Fury of the Avenger

A rancher hunts down the man who raped his sister. He has only some of the culprit's physical traits to guide him. Along his vengeful journey, he meets two beautiful women, one of whom becomes attached to him. He also has an encounter with a notorious outlaw.

The plot is similar to that of Cangaceiros de Lampião (1967) and probably countless other movies, mainly in the Western genre. The budget here is above average for Brazilian films; that makes for a few visually interesting scenes or sequences, even though the script is not very good, with an overuse of pseudo-poetical dialogue, and a plot which often borders on the nonsensical.

Rating: 31

Attention: une femme peut en cacher une autre! (1983)

English title: My Other Husband 

Alice has two families in two different cities. She is married with Philippe, an airplane pilot with whom she has a boy. They live in Paris where she works as a nurse. She has another job as a physiotherapist at a seaside town where she lives with Vincent, a schoolteacher with whom she has a boy and a girl.

The 1978 Brazilian movie Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands seems to have sparked some worldwide interest in female bigamy (or biandry), having spawned an American remake and this similarly themed French movie. This one is probably the dullest of the three. Despite the unconventional central situation, what we have here is an extremely conventional script and characters which fail to generate much empathy from the viewer.

Rating: 30

On aura tout vu... (1976)

 English titles: Now We've Seen It All!; The Bottom Line

François agrees to have his script rewritten as a pornographic film without telling his co-writer about it. François's girlfriend is against it, and in an act of revolt gets herself hired as the main actress of the movie.

Comedy which tries to derive comicity from the rising industry of pornographic films. Despite the good cast of comedians, it is relentlessly unfunny.

Rating: 21

Blue Steel (1934)

 In a small Western town, a distinguished citizen is actually a bandit. He plans to defraud everyone in town out of their houses with the help of a gang of outlaws. The sheriff and a newcomer happen to witness the killing of the the local hardware store's owner and the kidnapping of his daughter.

Very cheap comic-bookish Western. It's strictly cliché, but there is a certain juvenile charm to it. The most curious scene is when the newlywed husband asks for help because "he couldn't find it".

Rating: 33

La 7ème cible (1984)

Informal English title: The Seventh Target

A retired journalist suffers a series of automotive attacks and anonymous phone calls. He investigates the affair with the help of the police and discovers that he is apparently not the first victim of those criminals.

I guess one could define paranoia as a disease of the mind which renders it incapable of assessing probabilities as applied to one's own life. This film is not the only one to exploit the film viewer's tendency to that kind of disease, but it is certainly an extreme example of such. Here, unlike in Kafka's The Trial, it's not a State institution but a private organization who is causing all the trouble. Also unlike the Kafka novel, here all the details are worked out in the way of an explanation, implausible though it turns out to be. The end result is less than thrilling, but maybe I am being unfair to it. 

Rating: 30

Les grands ducs (1996)

Informal U.S. title: The Grand Dukes

 Three decadent stage actors land a job in a comedy touring the province. The producer just wants to botch the performances in order to collect the insurance.

Not especially attractive comedy which seems to be just a vehicle for its actors. The main idea here was previously used in the 1960 Brazilian comedy Eu Sou o Tal!, which I reviewed here, and consists in that the accidents during a performance make it better than it would normally be. Here it is better -- but still unsatisfactorily -- developed than in that earlier film.

Rating: 30

Viva Knievel! (1977)

 A motorcycle daredevil is doing a stunt in Mexico. His promoter intends to use the event for committing a crime.

Mildly entertaining mix of drama and thriller. The dramatic bits are corny and have little interest; the sequences involving stunts and the final chase are well done.

Rating: 38

Carnaval Barra Limpa (1967)

 A young starlet is visiting Brazil during Carnival. She wears a necklace with a huge diamond which is coveted by several robbers.

Worthless comedy which is shoddily scripted and fuzzily directed; the film's main box office appeal derived from the musical numbers featuring some very popular singers of that era. The cinematography is vey competent, and the film has some very beautiful shots of Rio de Janeiro and at a luxury hotel where the action is set.

Rating: 12

L'amour en douce (1985)

 English title: Love on the Quiet

Womanizing lawyer is caught by his wife with another woman; his wife leaves him and starts a relationship with an older man. He meets a prostitute and starts a relationship with her.

Drama which examines marriage, its exigencies and pitfalls. A man who cannot remain faithful finds in a prostitute his mirror image and only suitable partner; a woman who demands fidelity finds in a man past his prime the only partner who could comply with her demand. It's all very sensible, but also very unexciting.

Rating: 31

Le crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)

Second viewing; previously viewed on November 11, 1993

 English title: The Crime of Monsieur Lange

The titular character is an employer at the printing department of a small publishing house, and a writer of pulp Westerns in his spare time. His employer has embezzled the funds he loaned for the company, and gets himself in unsurmountable debt; he works out a deal with sponsors which would make use of Lange's stories. Concurrently to those affairs, there are multiple love and sex stories involving men at the publishing house and at a boarding house and women at a nearby laundry.

I do not know for sure what exactly rubbed me the wrong way in this movie upon my previous viewing. There are aspects of it which are flawed, as I see them today, but I am not sure they are the same ones that I objected to earlier. The main merit of the movie is the dialogue and interplay of characters, which stem no doubt primordially from the screenwriter's work. As for the movie's alleged political reverberations, they are mostly based on very simplistic notions, some of which fail to make sense even on a very basic level. For example, the notion that you can bribe a debt collector seems absurd on the face of it; the original creditor does not care about these proceedings, and will not be moved by them; furthermore, a collector would hardly be willing to risk his job for a few hundred francs. This doesn't reach the point of ruining the movie, to be sure, but is one among several signs of political and economic naivete which permeate the movie. The film seems to be part of a leftist project which aims to denigrate capitalism and praise cooperative organizing, but it is simply foolish to imagine that this particular capitalist is representative of his entire class; no businessman would thrive by being so reckless and dishonest; as for cooperatives, I have nothing in principle against them, but it is to be noted that, after having devoted all its time to depict the flaws of a capitalist enterprise, no time at all is left to focus on the operation of its socialist follow-up. If one lets go of the more radical political notions, and also of the more naive plot details, though, the film is quite satisfactory as a melodrama and a simplified social and moral study.

Rating: 65 (up from 50)

Péril en la demeure (1985)

US title: Peril; UK title: Death in a French Garden

A young man is hired to give guitar lessons to the teenage daughter of a rich couple. The girl's mother begins an affair with him; he befriends a mysterious woman who lives next door to them. He also befriends a professional killer.

Postmodernist noir with stylized dialogue and mise-en-scène, and a great emphasis on eroticism. The end result is, well, stylish, but not much more than that.

Rating: 39

Where Are the Children? (1986)

 Two children are kidnapped by a stranger when they are playing in the front yard. Some apparently compromising information comes to light regarding the children's mother. Another person is seen prowling around the house for unknown reasons.

Atrocious suspense story with abundant absurdities both in plot and in character behavior. The cinematography if fine.

Rating: 11

Dis-moi que tu m'aimes (1974)

 English title: Tell Me You Love Me

Three friends -- two working partners and a client of theirs -- separate from their wives at more or less the same time. They initially enjoy their newfound freedom, and so do their wives. Two of those couples do not view their separation as definitive; the third one has an incompatibility problem of a higher order.

The seventies witnessed a change in the relationship between the sexes. Of course it began earlier than that, but in the seventies things were pretty much consolidated, and there was no turning back. This movie tries to explore those changes through farce. It features three couples, each exemplifying one issue: wives as sex objects; wives as household servants; and wives as a means of concealing male homosexuality. The film tackles its subject superficially and is extremely predictable in all its details. 

Film length was 85 minutes, which is much less than the different figures provided by IMDB and Wikipedia, respectively.

Rating: 31

Candinho (1954)

 Loosely based on the novella Candide, ou l'optimisme by Voltaire, first published in 1759.

The titular character is found as a newborn by a family of farmers who take him in and raise him. When he grows up he is still living with them as an unpaid servant of the household. The farmer's daughter falls in love with him. After they are caught kissing each other by her father, Candinho is expelled from the farm, and roams the towns in search of his biological mother. He goes through assorted adventures in the process.

Comedy in the picaresque style. Its comicity is very light and unpretentious, with some rather tame satirical bits here and there. It is not without interest, though, and may even be viewed with a modicum of pleasure.

Rating: 51

La valise (1973)

 U.S. title: Man in the Trunk

This film's basic situation is probably inspired by a real story which happened in 1964 with a man named Mordechai Louk. There is an earlier movie -- Trunk to Cairo (1965) -- which reportedly also drew inspiration from that event.

A spy has his cover blown and takes refuge at a friendly embassy. He is put inside a trunk and smuggled out of the country under the supervision of an agent from that friendly country. He runs into several mishaps and into a beautiful woman with whom he had fallen in love just before he was exposed.

Mostly uninspired comedy which merges two main ideas: the titular one, regarding an unusual confinement and transportation, and the tale of a supposedly irresistible woman, who uses that feature to her advantage at every occasion, and thus becomes everyone's woman in the process. One plot point remains loose (or I didn't pay enough attention): was the woman really the one responsible for blowing the spy's cover? If so, how did it happen and how could they remain friends afterwards? But inquiring about such details in such a lightweight comedy is perhaps not reasonable.

Rating: 37

Au coeur du mensonge (1999)

 U.S. Title: The Color of Lies

Literal English Title: At the Heart of the Lie

A painter who gives drawing lessons becomes a suspect in the rape and murder of one of his students. A talk show host tries to seduce his wife. The action is set at a small seaside town where, in addition to those aforementioned events, a string of thefts of art objects is going on. As commenter dbdumonteil points out on IMDB, this film's plot is remarkably similar to 1951 Georges Simenon's novel La mort de Belle, which got a film version released in 1961.

The title gives away the theme of the movie: Truth and Lies, and how they come to rule our lives. A man who lives by the Truth is pitted against a man who lives by Lies. But are those self-descriptions accurate? A man who boasts of living truthfully could be just deceiving himself, while a man who acknowledges that Lying is an integral part of existence is perhaps fundamentally honest. Those paradoxes come to their apex when it is shown that Truth always tries to kill Falsehood, but, because it must conceal its act, what really happens turns out to be the reverse: Lies always kill the Truth and rule the world. One can enjoy the film on a more down-to-earth level, of course: as a whodunit and study of customs. As such, it is quite passable and well done, with a remarkable leading performance and serviceable supporting ones.

Rating: 60

Les démons de l'aube (1946)

 English title: Dawn Devils

World War 2. A French commando fighting in Tunisia does some small attacks and trains for a bigger operation. A new member happens to know the leader and hold a grudge against him on account of a message which failed to be delivered. Eventually they are scheduled to take part in Operation Dragoon, in which the allies will land in the Southern Coast of France. A pretty accurate and detailed summary may be found in this page.

Passable war drama which nevertheless gets a little hard to understand at some points on account of the somewhat cryptic dialogue. Anyway the action sequences are more interesting than the contrived drama.

Rating: 40

Dostoevskiy (2011)

 English title: Dostoevsky

Biographical mini-series about the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). We get to witness his prison years, his conservative views, his several women, his gambling addiction, his health problems, his financial problems, his writing, etc.

Exceedingly well-done biopic. I usually don't enjoy this genre very much, and I frankly don't know how accurate this mini-series was, but overall I found it quite watchable and also lovely to look at on account of the many natural and urban views on display throughout the narrative. The acting was splendid too. I feel like I know more about Dostoevsky now than before I watched it.

Rating: 66

Olivia (1951)

U.S. title: The Pit of Loneliness 

At a French finishing school, an English student falls in love with the headmistress. There is another teacher who is always indisposed and jealous of the attention the headmistress receives.

This is similar to Mädchen in Uniform, but for some reason which is not exactly clear in my memory I liked that film a lot more than I liked Olivia. Anyway, so many films depicting so similar situations makes me think that colleges for girls used to be cesspools of unnatural desires; I suppose parents maybe looked the other way with the comforting thought that at least they wouldn't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies. In this film, the headmistress refrains from fully indulging her desires towards the protagonist, out of scruples. It is implicit, though, that she had had no such scruples with some of the other students, besides having relationships with one or more of her colleagues. The film is not explicit about her reasons, but seems to suggest that the intensity of the girl's passions, as well as her inexperience, raised a red flag on the older woman. The villain of the film is the German teacher. I guess Germans were still an easy target in 1951. Maybe one of the main flaws here is that the protagonist's feelings are aroused too soon and without a development which would make it more convincing. Or maybe the shadow of a previous better movie with a similar plot made this one feel kind of redundant.

Rating: 37

Un homme à abattre (1967)

 English title: A Man to Kill

A small organization locates a possible former SS officer in Barcelona. They try to ascertain his identity with the intent to kill him in case he is really the man they think he is.

Rather gloomy thriller which possibly would inspire more sympathy for its "good" guys if some scenes depicting the alleged cruel acts of their nemesis were actually shown. As it is, the film feels rather cold and mechanical. The only memorable scene is when a female character reveals her real hair. I am not sure this is memorable in a good way, though.

Rating: 34

Evel Knievel (1971)

A motorcycle daredevil is about to perform a great stunt and he recalls his early life and how he got where he is now.

This is a conventional biopic except for the unusual fact that the subject matter was still alive and only 32 at the time of its release. I really cannot find anything useful to say about the film, which is watchable in a trivial way but has all the banal clichés one usually finds in biopics. In fact I was led to watch it due to a probable mistake: I had read a mention to it (by Christopher Mulrooney) which probably meant to refer to another movie -- the later Viva Knievel! (1977) -- and got the titles mixed up. I think the only thing I will remember from this film is how impressed I was by the vocals on the two songs which play during the movie (one during the opening and closing credits and another during the film proper), and how intrigued I was that the name of the singer was absent from the film's credits, and even from the IMDB and Wikipedia pages. It was not very easy to find that name by searching the web, but I did find it (here): it is Jim Sullivan. Here is a piece on him and the mystery surrounding his disappearance.

Rating: 31

Clérambard (1969)

 A nobleman goes through a transforming experience (there are more detailed summaries online).

This isn't a terribly interesting film, I'm afraid. Partly, that's because the actions of the protagonist after his metamorphosis do not make much sense, despite the film's attempt, through some of the dialogue, to make us think otherwise. Well, from where I stand, giving away one's meager possessions at random is not a very rational or efficient way to end the world's "injustice". And it's the story of a man who goes from broke to destitute, therefore not exactly a paragon of self-sacrifice if you ask me. Anyway, what happens in this movie is rarely funny, and, while it's not extremely dull either, it is mostly barely entertaining.

Rating: 40

Un nuage entre les dents (1974)

English title: A Cloud in the Teeth

Two reporters roam Paris in search of newsworthy incidents. During a news coverage, one of them loses his two kids. After a fruitless search, they begin to suspect the kids have been kidnapped. They get in touch with their newspaper, who in turn decides to run headlines with the story. A citywide search is put in motion, with comical results.

The vogue of buddy movies was rising at the time, only this movie is a little atypical for having reporters instead of cops as protagonists. The only review in English I found for this movie, by IMDB commenter Klaas-2, sums it up well: "hilarious, perhaps somewhat overdone". Anyway, I think their depiction of newspapers' ethical standards is perfectly believable.

Rating: 51

Città violenta (1970)

 English titles: Violent City; The Family

A professional assassin is betrayed by one of his clients and by his girlfriend. He goes to prison and upon release receives an offer to join a criminal organization.

Well-filmed but poorly written crime thriller. The initial car chase is the high point of the movie. What follows seems to have been written as they went along (by a ridiculously high number of screenwriters), in such a way that sometimes we wonder whether we are watching one of those avant-garde movies where events do not follow a strictly logical order and the story repeats itself with minor variations, like in Last Year in Marienbad, or Cet obscur objet du désir, for two examples off the top of my head (but I watched those so long ago that I may be making a mistaken comparison). Also, the characters seem more like an evocation of earlier fictional avatars than any real life counterparts. As in most European genre productions, it is impossible not to sense a certain self-parodic quality. I don't understand, however, why IMDB categorizes the tarantula in the prison cell as a goof due to the fact that there are no tarantulas in Europe -- I thought he was in a prison in the Caribbean; well, maybe I was mistaken.

Rating: 38

Les intrigantes (1954)

 English titles: The Scheming Women; The Plotters

The two owners of a theater are walking on a footbridge inside the premises of their theater when one of them falls to his death on the floor below. A man working for their company as a kind of production manager sends an anonymous letter to the police accusing the surviving owner of murdering his associate. It turns out the accuser covets the wife of the man he accuses. She advises her husband to get himself  committed to a psychiatric institution while she tries to find proof of his innocence. But she soon strays from that purpose...

There is really not much in the way of a mystery here, things follow a more or less predictable course. The behavior of the female lead might be a little surprising to some, and might put others off a little, but movies are hardly to be expected to be psychology manuals. As a depiction of theater folks it is somewhat interesting, and as a criminal drama it is watchable but not top notch.

Rating: 45

Avenging Force (1986)

 A retired agent investigates a ring of White supremacists who resort to terrorism. The villains enjoy human hunting in the Louisiana bayous and seem to embrace a sort of Darwinist credo.

The chief baddie in this film gives a speech in which he warns of "rioting in the streets of our cities" and "civil disorder everywhere". Oh boy, where did he get such wild notions, I wonder? And in 1986, to boot. The plot is entirely along those lines, and we could objectively say that it is functional, in the sense that it provides support to a fair number of action set-pieces. Those are very watchable, with very competent second unit work.

Rating: 37

L'amour en question (1978)

English title: Question of Love

 A man is murdered as he was arriving at his house. The prime suspect is his wife's lover, a foreigner, with the possible complicity of the wife herself. The lover leaves the country, and so the two suspects face trials in different countries.

This is a very plausible and well-constructed narrative, but still not all that interesting or memorable. The culprit is not exactly hard to guess either.

Rating: 40

La souriante Madame Beudet (1923)

English title: The Smiling Madame Beudet 

A married woman lives in a chronic state of boredom and develops a disliking towards her husband as she daydreams about a celebrity tennis player. Out of an impulse, she sets a deadly trap for her husband.

Based on a stage play written by two men, the "feminist" plot is not terribly interesting. On strictly cinematic terms, the job of replacing words with images sometimes pays off in psychological intensity, while other times the absence of intertitles makes it simply incomprehensible.

Rating: 39

La cigarette (1919)

English title: The Cigarette

 A man decides to commit suicide after he deduces that his wife is cheating on him. He opts for an unconventional manner of ending his own life.

This is from a time when people thought there was such a thing as a non-poisoned cigarette. Anyway, this film is not likely to provoke many emotions in modern audiences (and I suspect it didn't even in its day). I am usually opposed to tragedies, as they feel artificial and unrealistic, but a tragic ending would at least bring some life to this dull story, in a paradoxical way.

Rating: 45 

Baby ryazanskie (1927)

 English title: Women of Ryazan. 

Alternative titles: The Village of Sin; The Devil's Plaything; The Peasant Women of Ryazan

(*mild spoilers*) Life at a small rural village. Vassili is a rich farmer; his son Ivan falls in love with poor peasant Anna, an orphan. They marry. Vassili's daughter Vassilissa wants to marry poor blacksmith Nikolai, but his father forbids their relationship, so she leaves home to live with him. World War One breaks out and both Nikolai and Ivan are drafted. During Ivan's absence, Vassili rapes Anna.

Mildly interesting as a chronicle of peasants' lives and customs, with some well-filmed sequences, such as of a wedding and of a primitive amusement park. As a narrative, it has an educational slant through a somewhat manicheistic schematism: older women are gossipy and bigotted against their own kind; older men are brutes and satyrs; youngsters are pure and often victimized; etc. It's interesting to notice how some of the U.S. titles of this film didn't seem to get the film's message.

Rating: 37

The Blot (1921)

 A teacher has difficulties in providing for the well-being of his family. A religious minister wants to marry the teacher's daughter, but he is also poor. A wealthy student has a crush on the young woman, and starts courting her as well.

This well-made drama is quite acceptable for the most part of its duration, but towards the end becomes considerably implausible. Furthermore, there are serious problems with the way it conveys its defense of a better payment for teachers. The main problem is that the newly enrolled champions of that cause were never interested students, and that does not have anything to do with the teacher's salary; neither is it a question of morals; it is perfectly plausible that people become better through experience, but that has no bearing on their academic interest. Another problem with that last section is that the love triangle does not get a satisfactory solution.

Rating: 50

Le roi des aulnes (1931)

 Based on the poem by J.W. Goethe, written in 1782.

English title: The Erl King

A man is riding with his son when their horse suffers a fall and the boy is wounded. They take shelter in a nearby house. The boy isn't feeling well, but the man must continue his journey. They go through a forest, and the child has hallucinations.

Rather boring translation into images of a famous poem; the images are nice to look at, but they don't capture the emotional strength of the poem.

Rating: 35

Elle boit pas, elle fume pas, elle drague pas, mais... elle cause! (1970)

 English title: She Does Not Drink, Smoke or Flirt But... She Talks

A housemaid learns compromising information about one of her employers and reveals it to another; she goes on doing that with all three of them; that entails mutual blackmailing among those employers.

Nonsensical farce which does not shy away from vulgarity but is mildly funny, though a bit too monotonous. The title is funny too, but has nothing to do with the film; the protagonist is a smoker and an occasional drinker; her talking is calculated and essential to the plot, rather than the annoying kind that is the product of an uncontrollable urge, as the title seems to imply; she indeed does not flirt but that is neither here nor there; in short, it is a deceitful title, perhaps intended at enticing a certain kind of audience.

Rating: 40

Le petit soldat (1960)

English title: The Little Soldier

(warning: *mild spoilers*) Geneva, 1958. A member of a rightwing organization refuses to perform an assassination. He is blackmailed into it, but plans to escape to another country. He is kidnapped by the rival leftwing organization and tortured. He later finds out that his girlfriend is part of that leftwing organization. She is kidnapped and tortured by the rightwing organization, which once more demands that the protagonist do the assassination he had earlier refused to do.

This is a very early film of this writer/director, and he was still somewhat bound by a narrative structure, of which he would progressively free himself along his career. Still, it is very evident that he is not interested in psychology, or in plot realism. His notion of a man who deserts from a war and subsequently goes to fight *for* that same war as a terrorist may make sense to him, but I honestly do not see how. Not only that, but he also *refuses* to obey orders within his organization. Why did he join in the first place? Well, apparently he is some kind of romantic hero. A loner who likes poetry and engages in literary quotations and philosophizing at every possible opportunity. And what about his girlfriend? In the first half of the movie she is a somewhat lethargic model from abroad and then she suddenly turns into a dangerous leftwing activist (though she somehow can't shake her lethargic looks). As an essayistic dissertation about political and assorted other themes, framed as a semi-parodic spy thriller, however, the film works reasonably well. It is well filmed and well photographed, and provides an interesting document about its time without being too boring.

Rating: 50

Le boucher (1970)

 English title: The Butcher

In a small town, a butcher meets a schoolteacher (and headmistress) and they start a friendship. Concurrently to that, a series of grisly murders of women terrorize the town, and the police doesn't have a clue as to who is committing them.

I can't say I find all, or even most, of this film's plot and characters very plausible, but somehow it manages to engage the viewer's attention and even produce an emotional response to it. The film might appear to some to be primarily concerned about the titular character, but is it really? It is left for the viewer to decide (or not) about some more obscure aspects of his psyche, e.g., what role, if any, his war experience had in his present psychological affliction. I think, however, that the moral point of the film is made through the character of Hélène, the schoolteacher. Her ordeal is ironic: she had been scarred by a first relationship in which she was abandoned, and got wary of men subsequently. Hers is a dead end, though: even if she comes to be loved, she will not feel loved, because she lost her faith in men. Unless, of course, the man proves it to her, but then she will learn that one cannot eat one's cake and have it too.

Rating: 60

La jument verte (1959)

Based on the novel by Marcel Aymé, first published in 1933.

English title: The Green Mare

Two rural families develop a rivalry which grows into a frank enmity due to a wartime incident. Years later, the young daughter of one of the families becomes enamored of the young son of the other. When a letter containing references to that aforementioned incident goes missing, things take an unexpected turn.

This is one of the most outrageous films I have seen, on account of the behavior of some of its characters. It's not exactly the most interesting, let alone exciting one, but I confess I found it entertaining enough. It was criticized at the time for its unflattering depiction of peasants, and I wouldn't know whether it's reliable as a sociological study of peasant life. But what matters in fiction is plausibility, and I think the film acquits itself nicely at that. There is a review in French (by Frédéric Mercier) which I think covers a wide range of aspects of this film; it may be read here.

Rating: 51