Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (Zatôichi abare-himatsuri)
Directed by Kenji Misumi
Written by Shintaro Katsu from a character created by Kan Shiwozawa
1970/Japan
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

 

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. – Matthew 26:52

This 21st film in the Zatoichi series goes back to its roots and is one of the best so far.

The story is the same as all the others where Zatoich (Shintaru Katsui), the blind masseuse/gambler, is forced against his will to take up his cane sword again and fight off hordes of the enemy single-handedly.  He also has an arch-nemisis who will force him into a one-on-one duel.  This time it is Tetsuya Nakadai, who has too little screen time.

During his wanderings, Ichi comes upon a village that is under the thumb of an evil blind gang boss.  The boss uses what he thinks is his special insight on Zatoichi to manipulate him.  He sends his slave to Ichi to attempt to seduce him and take his cane sword,  But the spy falls in love with Ichi and refuses to carry out her mission.  So the boss entices Zatoichi to a “Fire Festival” for a final showdown.

Star Shintaru Katsu wrote the script and the production was helmed by Kenji Misumi, who directed the very first of the series The Tale of Zatoichi (1962), another really excellent entry.  Both clearly understand what makes the best of these pictures so great.  Accordingly, we have zero annoying little kids or comic relief or young lovers and plenty of mayhem, including a truly memorable fight between the naked Zatoichi and a group of attackers in a bath.  Katsu also has opportunities to display his skill as a comedian and actor.  Recommended if you have any interest at all in seeing what this is all about.

Montage of sword fights from various films

 

Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation
Directed by Barak Goodman and Jamila Ephron
Written by Barak Goodman and Don Kleszy
2019/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

 

Woodstock didn’t define a generation because everyone showed up or those who did were a perfectly representative sample. It defined a generation because, for a few days, it bottled its peculiar zeitgeist. — Alexandra Petri

Festival promoters, participants, and audience members talk about their experience over footage from back in the day.

I enjoyed this though I would have liked to see how these folks look now and learned more about what became of them 50 years on.

Documentary trailer

Joni Mitchell sings “Woodstock”

 

I don’t have as good a reason as the above but I’m smiling today because people can get on my blog and my comments are now working!  I have missed you a lot.  Hope to hear from you again.

No movie today.

To the velvet voice of Nat King Cole and clips of the Little Tramp.

The Passion of Anna (En passion)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Written by Ingmar Bergman
1969/Sweden
IMDb page
First viewing/Criterion Channel

 

Andreas Winkelman: It’s terrible not being fortunate. Everybody thinks they have the right to decide over you. Their benevolent contempt. A momentary desire to trample something living.

Sorry Ingmar, existential dread is not a good match for lockdown, police brutality and riots.

Four lonely people live on an isolated island in the Swedish Archipelago.  Divorcee Andreas Winkleman (Max von Sydow) lives as a recluse and bemoans his past humiliation.  Anna Fromm (Liv Ullmann) is a crippled widow who drops by to use Andreas’s phone.  Her deceased husband was also named Andreas adding to the confusion for this viewer.  Andreas and Anna begin living together but never really connect.

Elis Vergurus (Erland Josephson) is a cynical architect whose current work is a cultural center he says will be a “mausoleum to meaninglessness”.  His wife Eva (Bibi Andersson) suffers her own kind of emptiness.  These four couple and de-couple while some kind of a maniac mutilates the animals on the island.  Bergman breaks the fourth wall throughout with interviews of the actors about how they see their characters.  Snippets from his film Shame (1968) are seen in dream sequences.

Bergman and Sven Nyquist cannot help making a beautiful looking movie and this ensemble cast can be no less than flawless.  I could have done without the gimmicks. Many people love this movie but it is just too bleak and formless for me.

 

 

I think I have recovered my site!  So glad 7+ years of writing have not disappeared into the Ethernet.

Stay tuned for my next post.

I’ve been out of commission since May 5.  The problem is being worked on.  Don’t know if this will reach subscribers.  Like MacArthur, I shall return!

True Grit
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Written by Marguerite Roberts from a novel by Charles Portis
1969/US
IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

Rooster Cogburn: You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister. You gotta kill him or let him be.

John Wayne certainly did have true grit until the end.  Just what we all need during Lockdown.

The story takes place in the 19th Century Old West.  Mattie Ross’s father goes to town and is killed by Tom Chaney, who he was trying to help. Mattie (Kim Darby) is determined to track Chaney down and bring him to justice.  She has a small selection of U.S. Marshalls to help her and picks Rooster Cogburn who has a nasty reputation as a drunkard but is also known for his grit.  She makes a down payment payment.  Soon enough Rooster is also visited by La Beouf (Glenn Campbell), a Texas Ranger who is tracking Chaney for another crime.  Rooster and Le Beouf have no intention of taking Maddie along on their quest.

Maddie has no intention of being left behind and catches up with them.  The trio learns that Chaney will likely be found in the company of outlaw Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and eventually they catch up to him and his gang.  There is a fair amount of gunplay along the way.

I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable blend of action and adventure.  I have always wondered where people talked like the literary dialogue in this story but it is amusing enough.  I last saw this on original release when I disliked Wayne for his politics.  I seem to have forgiven him because I found him wonderful in this.  (And in so many previous movies).  Very fun film.  Recommended.

John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor.  The title tune was nominated for Best Music, Original Song.

 

 

The movies continued to break barriers in 1969 when Midnight Cowboy became the first, and only, X-rated film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, only a few years after the MPAA rating system was created.  1969 was the last year the MPAA used the M rating.

Boris Karloff died at age 81.  Judy Garland died of a prescription drug overdose at age 47. Actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski, was brutally murdered by the Manson Family.  Shirley Temple was named Ambassador to the United Nations.

Two long-running television series debuted – “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Sesame Street”.

Woodstock, a three-day rock music festival, attracted 400,000 young people for an outdoor concert marked by drug use, nudity, food shortages and profanity, as well as superb performances by the rock stars of the era.   The free concert was also remarkable for peaceful coexistence under trying circumstances.

On December 6, the Rolling Stones set out to replicate Woodstock on the West Coast by giving a free concert at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco.  They decided the Hells Angels motorcycle gang would be an ideal choice to provide security.  In truth the audience needed protection from the Angels and the inevitable ensued, culminating in a murder before Mick Jagger’s horrified eyes.

The number one Billboard single of the year was “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies (???!!!).  House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope won for Drama. “The Middle Americans” were Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year.

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.

Richard M. Nixon was inaugurated President of the United States.  The Beatles made their final live appearance as a group, on the rooftop of Apple Studios in London.

At Chappaquiddick, having been drinking and partying with young women aides of his brother Robert Kennedy, Senator Edward M. (“Ted”) Kennedy, at this time a married man and a father, slipped away with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne.  She was found trapped in his car submerged in just eight feet of water after he took a wrong turn off the Chappaquiddick bridge.  The Senator survived the incident.  He later plead guilty to leaving the scene of an incident causing serious injury for which he received a suspended sentence.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch revealed the details of the Mai Lai massacre to a stunned American public.

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I’m again aiming at around 50 movies for 1969.  The list I’m working from is here.  If I’m missing something essential let me know.

Oscar winners

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon
Directed by Chris Marker and Francois Reichenbach
Written by Chris Marker
1968/France
IMDb link
First viewing/Criterion Channel

 

[box] And it’s one, two, three/ What are we fighting for?/ Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn/ Next stop is Vietnam – “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag”, Country Joe and the Fish[/box]

French directors capture the carnival atmosphere and brutality of the March for Peace on Washington.

On October 21, 1967, thousands of anti-war protestors gathered in Washington to demonstrate against the War in Vietnam.  They were joined by pro-war activists and neo-Nazis staging counter demonstrations plus hundreds of military police struggling to keep the protestors in line and away from the Pentagon.

I enjoyed this time capsule of the TV news that plagued our family dinner-time drama in 1968.  I think there’s enough stuff for people to get that riled up about now but it might take sending unwilling boys off to die to stir up the intensity of these protests.

Country Joe McDonald in Woodstock (1969)

Gallery of Horror
Directed by David L. Hewitt
Written by David L. Hewitt and Gary R. Heacock; original stories by Russ Jones
1967/US
IMDb link
First viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Tagline: So shocking it will sliver your liver![/box]

Will David L. Hewitt enter the pantheon of bad movie directors with Ed Wood, Coleman Francis and Larry Buchanan?  Only time will tell.

The filmmakers manage to cram John Carradine’s narration and no less than five short stories into one 83 minute film with predictable results.  Each of the vaguely creepy stories ends with a twist that will just leave you shaking your head.

No laughs.  No reason to watch.