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Sun Aug 04 2019 20:41 July Film Roundup:
- Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018): You know I like an arthouse film now and again. I'm glad they tried something different, but I wasn't really feeling this one. I did like the 3D section, but it probably doesn't make sense unless you sit through the first half. The second half felt like an escape room, which is pretty cool, but the first half was the random, disconnected clues written on scraps of paper which you need to assemble to solve the escape room.
- Bathtubs Over Broadway (2018): Recommended by good ol' Pat Rafferty, this documentary is both a survey of a forgotten art form, and the story of a snarky person who discovers sincerity. I was hoping for a lot more in-depth on the survey, but I liked Steve Young's term of "comedy poisoning" for diagnosing his own snark. Really fun overall.
- Any Number Can Win (1963): A.k.a. Melody en sous-sol, a.k.a. The Caper That Sank, a.k.a. Never Steal Anything Wet (just kidding). This had really fun heist planning and aftermath, but the heist itself, a dialogue-light bit clearly inspired by Rififi, was a little dull, and the romance subplot was a snoozefest. I much prefered the noir opening, where the aging heistmaster gets out of prison only to discover that Modernism has consumed the world and Jacques Tati is filming Playtime in his home town. Had a real Reginald Perrin vibe.
- The Burglars (1971): A.k.a. Le Casse. This movie starts with a huge nerd-out as the titular burglars invade a beautiful 1960s mansion and crack the safe with a specialized piece of equipment that, e.g. uses Scantron-like cards to program a key-cutting machine. Includes long sequences where Jean-Paul Belmondo is looking stuff up in the service manual, a manual which is either the most detailed prop in the entire movie, written in good manual English, or... this is a real piece of equipment with a real service manual? I guess they gotta make safe keys somehow. I would love to know more about this machine!
Also, as long as I'm focusing on details most people don't care about, in the granary office at the end of this movie there's a hatrack which strongly resembles what Duchamp's Hat Rack would look like if it were actually a readymade.
Often I focus on these little things because the rest of the movie was boring, but although the heist that opens The Burglars is the best part of the movie, there's a ton of good stuff here. There's a cool car chase, good stunts, excellent cat-and-mouse between Belmondo and Omar Sharif. The fashions and design are swinging '60s throughout. Bad parts: the ending is pretty weak, there's a doesthegoldfishdie.com moment near the beginning, and an ugly scene where Belmondo's character slaps a woman around and it's played for laughs—unnecessary and really hard to stomach.
- The Bishop's Wife (1947): It's no Wings of Desire, but it covers some of the same ground. The minor characters are fun. Cary Grant's character is the ultimate service top, and it's wonderful to watch him be oblivious to society's rules about who does things for whom. One of these gags is reprised twice in a way that reminded me of Billy Wilder. IMDB says uncredited writing credit for... Billy Wilder! Trivia says he was just called in to redo a couple scenes, though. You can tell he didn't have full rein over the screenplay because the characters fulfill their dreams.