Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Little Shop of Horrors
Directed by Frank Oz
Written by Howard Ashman based on his musical play and the film “The Little Shop of Horrors” by Roger Corman and Charles D. Griffith
1986/USA
The Geffen Company
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Audrey II: [singing] Feed me, Seymour / Feed me all night long – That’s right, boy! – You can do it! Feed me, Seymour / Feed me all night long / Ha ha ha ha ha! / Cause if you feed me, Seymour / I can grow up big and strong.[/box]

Corman’s original was made in 2 1/2 days for a budget of $22,500.  Multiply the budget by 1,000, add color and music you get even more fun!

The film is framed by a “Greek Chorus” consisting of a 60’s style girl group that comments on the action.  The plot of the  has been considerably fleshed out to include an origin story and new relationships.  Seymour (Rick Moranis) discovers the plant at a Chinese herbalist’s shop after a total eclipse of the sun.  He names it Audrey II after his crush, Audrey, the clerk at Skid Row florist shop where we works.

In this version, Audrey is dating the sadistic dentist played here by a fantastic Steve Martin. Bill Murray takes over from Jack Nicholson as the masochistic patient and Vincent Gardenia plays Mushnik.  John Candy, James Belushi and Christopher Guest have cameos.  For me the highlight of the film is the voice of the great Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops as Audrey II.

Life has been rearing its ugly head recently and I needed some cheering up before immersing myself in further dark foreign films from 1960.  This did the trick!  I have seen the musical on stage and loved this on its theatrical release.  It was just as good yesterday. Frank Oz of Muppets fame did a brilliant job with the various growth stages of the Audrey II puppet and the songs are all quite catchy.  Warmly recommended.

Little Shop of Horrors was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Effects, Visual Effects and Best Music, Original Song (“Mean Green Mother from Outer Space”).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ea5jKFGgUw

Clip

The Sun’s Burial (Taiyô no hakaba)
Directed by Nagisa Oshima
Written by Toshiro Ishido and Nagisa Oshima
1960/Japan
Shochiku Eiga
First viewing/FilmStruck

 

[box] “Teenagers. Everything is so apocalyptic.” ― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Creatures[/box]

I could admire the production values even if I could not entirely figure out the plot.

We are introduced to the dregs of post-War Osaka youth and gang culture.  Mostly we follow the story of Hanako, a tough young woman who is in the blood business but is open to do just about anything in the way of illicit commerce.  (The blood is used to manufacture cosmetics).  The various gangs also deal in prostitution and forgery.  A lot of sex and violence is involved.

The “sun” in the title undoubtedly symbolizes Japan and the film takes a bleak view of both the country’s future and human nature.  The main thing that struck me was how modern the film looked.  It could have been a color film made maybe 30 years later in its lighting and composition.  The score is fantastic.  You could see that Oshima was on his way to being an auteur.  Judging from most of his output (In the Realm of the Senses, etc.), I somehow doubt that I will become a fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqBtqBgpT-I

Clip (no subtitles)

In 1960:

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho became the first American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen. The first of the 5-pointed pink stars in the sidewalk on the “Hollywood Walk of Fame” was unveiled.  It was awarded to actress Joanne Woodward. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment was the last black-and-white film to win the Best Picture Academy Award Oscar until Schindler’s List (1993).

Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, received full credit for writing the screenplays for Preminger’s Exodus and Kubrick’s Spartacus, thus becoming the first blacklisted writer to receive screen credit. In 1960, Trumbo was also finally reinstated in the Writers Guild of America. This official recognition effectively brought an end to the HUAC ‘blacklist era’.

Clark Gable died of a heart attack (and coronary thrombosis) at the age of 59. Gable was buried at Forest Lawn next to his deceased actress/wife Carole Lombard, who died in an airplane crash in 1942. Art director Cedric Gibbons, who during his long career had won 11 Oscars for Art Direction (from 1929 to 1957) (from a total of 39 nominations), died at the age of 67. Actress Margaret Sullavan, died at the age of 50 of an accidental overdose of barbiturates.

 

Jack Kennedy (L) & Dick Nixon exchanging smiles, standing under glaring lights prior to beginning their 1st TV debate.

John F. Kennedy won the U.S. Presidential election by the narrowest margin in history following the first-ever televised presidential debates. At age 43, he became the second youngest man to serve as President and the youngest man elected to the office.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. The event triggered many similar non-violent protests throughout the Southern United States, and six months later the original four protesters were served lunch at the same counter. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law.

Xerox introduced the first photocopier.  Aluminum cans were used for the first time. “The Twist” dance craze swept the nation.  The FDA approved the first oral contraceptive pill.  President Eisenhower sent 3,500 soldiers into Vietnam.

Advise and Consent by Alan Drury won the Pulizter Prize for fiction.  Fiorello!, book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbot; music by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, won for Drama.    U.S. Scientists were named Time Magazine’s Men of the Year.    “The Theme from a Summer Place”, an instrumental by Percy Faith and His Orchestra, spent nine weeks atop the Billboard charts.

Still from the Eichmann trial

Seventeen African nations gained independence.  A Soviet missile shot down the US U2 spy plane. Fidel Castro nationalized American oil, sugar and other US interests in Cuba. OPEC ( Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ) was formed.  Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured by Israeli agents in Argentina.

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The list of films I will select from for 1960 is here.  I have previously reviewed  on this site.  There’s lots to look forward to!

Montage of stills from Oscar Winners

Montage of stills from nominees in major Oscar categories

The World of Apu (Apur Sansar)
Directed by Sayajit Ray
Written by Sayajit Ray from a story by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
Sayajit Ray Productions
Repeat viewing/FilmStruck
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Apurba Roy: I’m invited to a wedding and I come home with the bride![/box]

Ray saved the best in his Apu Trilogy for last.  The film combines great beauty with a sense of real intimacy.

Following the death of his older sister, father and mother in the previous films, Apu must quit college part way through due to lack of funds.  He has shown a considerable talent for writing while still in school and continues to write short stories and a first novel through the film.  He moves to Calcutta to try to find work but it is not easy to find a steady job to supplement the income he earns as a tutor.  Finally he must settle for a factory job totally outside his interests or talents.

Nonetheless, Apu enjoys his life and the new ideas and sights that surround him.  Poverty is not so bad while there is no responsibility that goes with it.

Then Apu’s best friend invites him to attend a relative’s wedding in his home village.  After the men get there, the family discovers the groom selected is “mad”.  Mother refuses to let the marriage go through.  Yet if the daughter is not married that very day, she will become unmarriageable (reason never really explained). The family prevails on a very reluctant Apu to take over groom duties.  He complies and must take his bride, a relative stranger, back to his sordid student quarters in the city.  In spite of everything, love grows fast and marriage is everything Apu could have dreamed it to be.  I think I’ll stop the plot summary right here

I love this movie.  My favorite aspects are the exquisite cinematography and the intimate details of daily existence that Ray manages to capture.  It all seems quite real.  The standard of acting goes up a notch when compared to the first two films.  The story continues to be sad but ends on a note of hope.  Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC0wf7AnzGw

Clip – print quality on restored version is superb, much better than clip

I’m home from an outstanding break birdwatching and catching up with my friend.  This year was especially awesome as there had just been a rainstorm with plenty of flooded fields for the birds to enjoy.  Here are a couple of feeble pictures I took with my iPhone.

Great Egret with Snow Geese, country road, Placer County, California Peregrine Falcon, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

While I was at it, I actually saw two movies in the theater!  I can recommend Arrival (2016) for sci-fi buffs.  It’s about a linguist (Amy Adams) whose mission is to communicate with aliens that have popped up all over the planet and figure out why they came.  It has something to do with a message about the non-linearity of time.  Some of it went over my head but the movie is so eerily beautiful that I didn’t care.

The other was Manchester by the Sea (2016).  The acting, by Casey Affleck, Melissa Williams and others, is fantastic and the film is beautiful to look at.  Be prepared for what seems like hours and hours of unrelieved despair, however.  I was just not up for anything quite that depressing.

I’m looking forward to getting back to 1959 where I belong!

 

I’ll be visiting my bird watching friend to see the winter migrants in the Sacramento area.  Will return on December 21.  See you at the movies!

 

Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

 

Fires on the Plain (Nobi)
Directed by Kon Ichikawa
Written by Nata Wada from a novel by Shohei Ooka
1959/Japan
Daiei Studios/Kadokawa Herald Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

Quartermaster: Kill yourself only if you have to. Here are some rations.

There are some images I would rather not have indelibly etched upon my memory.  This film contains several.

It is February 1945 on Leyte in the Philippines. MacArthur has returned and the U.S. is engaged in a mopping up operation.  PFC Tamura has TB.  The hospital sent him back to his unit with a few yams.  His squad commander doesn’t want an extra mouth to feed either.  He hands him a grenade and tells him if the hospital won’t take him back Tamura should kill himself.  Tamura is nothing if not dutiful but he can’t quite bring himself to suicide.

The hospital won’t take anyone who can still walk.  Tamura spends the remainder of the film wandering, sometimes alone and sometimes with companions.  All are slowly starving to death and resort to increasingly horrifying acts of barbarity.

I loved Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp so I was looking forward to his other acclaimed WWII film.  From the blurb, it sounded like Tamura would be a noble figure like the hero in the former film.  Instead, Tamura is merely the least repugnant of survivors who are alive only because of their ruthlessness.  I couldn’t help feeling pity for the men, and the images are stunning, but the whole thing is so hellish that I can’t see watching this again.

Clip

I will be on hiatus until October 31 for a road trip to see my niece in Provo, Utah, with some Las Vegas thrown in on the margins.  See you then!

 

I subscribe to the Criterion Collection newsletter and have breaking news.  The collection is moving to Filmstruck, a new streaming service, from its current home on Hulu.  The new service will be co-curated by Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies and will focus on hard-to-find films.  For me, the most exciting aspect of the service will be the ability to get commentary tracks via streaming.   I’ve been waiting for that to happen.  The first to launch will apparently be the out-of-print commentary track to The Silence of the Lambs.

I try not to spam my readers but I just had to share this.

You can sign up to get a free two-week subscription when the service launches on October 19 here.  Criterion’s announcement is here.