{"id":172787,"date":"2022-02-14T12:03:49","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=172787"},"modified":"2022-02-14T12:06:55","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T17:06:55","slug":"january-2022-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=172787","title":{"rendered":"January 2022 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crossfire<\/em><\/strong> (1947; d. Edward Dmytryk)
\nWent on a little Robert Mitchum kick, thanks to the Criterion Channel. Crossfire<\/i> came out the same year as Gentleman’s Agreement<\/i>, and both films deal with anti-Semitism, which was very much on American minds at the time, as the revelations about what the Nazis were actually doing flooded the world with horror. I have always felt that Gentleman’s Agreement<\/i> has very good intentions but is didactic and boring and Gregory Peck is stiff as an actor. John Garfield – an actual Jew, who changed his name in order to be more acceptable to mainstream anti-Semitic society – and little Dean Stockwell- walk away with the movie. Gentleman’s Agreement<\/i> must be understood in the context of its time, and it was – rightfully – a big deal and an eye-opener. Anti-Semitism was just not talked about, or even acknowledged as a “thing”. To this DAY it’s not. And now, the Left is so anti-Israel that it comes up as anti-Semitism (see the flap about the Pride parade in Chicago a couple years back, where some people were “triggered” by a Star of David on a banner held up by a Jewish LGBTQ group. I’m not quoting “triggered” to be mean. I am literally quoting what was said. This is what we’re up against. Ignorance. And yes, equating all Jews with the crimes of one state IS anti-Semitic. So Gentleman’s Agreement<\/i> set out to reveal the depths of anti-Semitism in civilized (or “civilized”) society. Okay. But here’s Crossfire<\/i>, which doesn’t have as self-righteous a tone, and doesn’t feel like homework and\/or a lecture – and it is powerfully ABOUT anti-Semitism and shows its hallucinatory hold on those who subscribe to it. An excellent cast of three “Roberts”: Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, and Robert Young. Plus, Gloria Grahame plays a small role and she is fantastic (unsurprisingly). Very good film. <\/p>\n

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The Big Steal<\/strong><\/em> (1949; d. Don Siegel)
\nTwo years after Out of the Past<\/i>, one of the greatest examples of film noir, comes The Big Steal<\/i>, which reunites Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, this time in a Don Siegel production, about two people – both on the run for different reasons – teaming up in Mexico to escape the forces trailing them. I’ve been thinking about Don Siegel a lot, since I just re-watched Flaming Star<\/i>, one of the best movies Elvis made. Elvis’ movies tended to be just that: “Elvis Movies”. But Flaming Star<\/i> is a “Don Siegel movie”. Siegel understands action, creating tension, keeping things moving. And Mitchum and Greer are awesome together, two hard-bitten tough-talking people, holding each other at arms’ length until … they can’t anymore. <\/p>\n

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Everybody Knows<\/strong><\/em> (2019; d. Asghar Farhadi)
\nFarhadi is one of my favorite current-day directors but I had missed this one somehow. His first film with no connection to Iran. It takes place in Spain, and it stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, as one-time “sweethearts”, brought to together again by a big family reunion – where things go south – REAL south. Cruz is superb – it’s one of her best (although … every time she’s in something I say “it’s one of her best”). Devastating film, with Farhadi’s typically eagle eye on the lookout for moral and ethical conundrums. <\/p>\n

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Dopesick<\/em><\/strong> (2020; created by Danny Strong)
\nI binged the Hulu series, and then … watched it again. It is fantastic. Daunting, the challenge they set for themselves with this series, and Danny Strong in particular. Instead of focusing on just one person’s journey with opioids, the focus is diffused out – through this one community, but then also through the Purdue Pharma sales reps, as well as the boogey-man himself Richard Sackler. Such good acting, across the board. <\/p>\n

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The Pharmacist<\/strong><\/em> (2020; d. Jenner Furst; Julia Willoughby Nason)
\nI was on a roll with the whole Opioid crisis thing, so I re-watched this Netflex series, which I highly recommend. <\/p>\n

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Hidden Figures<\/strong><\/em> (2017; d. Theodore Melfi)
\nA re-watch. One of my favorite films of the last 10 years. <\/p>\n

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Crime of Passion<\/strong><\/em> (1957; d. Gerd Oswald)
\nThis movie is so strange! Barbara Stanwyck, a popular advice columnist, throws it all away after an afternoon drink with a cop played by Sterling Hayden. Which … is not strange at all. I might throw away my whole former life if I spent an afternoon with Sterling Hayden. But she goes way too far! Suddenly, she’s no longer a career woman, and instead a wife ambitious for her husband’s career. But … he himself is NOT ambitious. She behaves like a total maniac! She totally doesn’t fit in with the other wives. She begins to plot and plan on his behalf. It is VERY uncomfortable. They get married and she instantly starts driving him crazy. <\/p>\n

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Normal People<\/strong><\/em> (2020; d. Lenny Abrahamson; Hettie Macdonald)
\nThis one’s been a long time coming. I read the book and was bowled over by it. I held off on reading it because it was so universally praised and I’m a contrarian like that, and then I read it and was like, “Oh, so THAT’S what the fuss is all about.” It usually happens this way. I absolutely loved the series. They didn’t have to do too much to adapt the book. It’s all there. Such good actors. <\/p>\n

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West Side Story<\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Steven Spielberg)
\nI took my niece Lucy to see this at a little movie palace, recently renovated, right down the street from me. It was such a special day. I knew Lucy would love it, but I should have warned her ahead of time that Tony dies. That was a tough one. She said to me after, “I don’t think I’ve seen a movie with a sad ending before.” I realized that this was a momentous day – I remember my first sad movie – so we went out for lunch after, and we talked about the sad ending, and if she had any feelings about it, and then we looked up all the actors on her phone so she could see what else they had done. It was a really good aunt-niece day.<\/p>\n

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Borrego<\/em><\/strong> (2022; d. Jesse Harris)
\nI reviewed this one for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Cat’s Meow<\/strong><\/em> (2002; d. Peter Bogdanovich)
\nWhen he died this past month, one of you mentioned Cat’s Meow<\/i> in the comments of my tribute post, so I decided to re-watch it. It’s been so long. I love it so much. Kirsten Dunst captures who and what Marion Davies really was – an effervescent funny lovable girl. Citizen Kane<\/i> is not a documentary. It’s a fictional film. Marion Davies did not end up like Susan, although some of the underlying issues were present in the management of her career. I love how there’s an almost French farce quality to the activity in all the staterooms of that yacht – people sneaking in and out and around – and loved Eddie Izzard as Chaplin.<\/p>\n

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History is Made at Night<\/strong><\/em> (1937; d. Frank Borzage)
\nWhat a dream of a movie. So romantic. Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer spend a magical night together, falling into a dreamspace of intimacy, where time almost stands still. Borzage’s view of love is magical and redemptive. Love is literally life-saving. The movie ends with a ship colliding into an iceberg, and the sequences are, in some cases, shot for shot what shows up in Titanic<\/i>. James Cameron knows his History is Made at Night<\/i>, methinks.<\/p>\n

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Emma.<\/strong><\/em> (2020; d. Autumn de Wilde)
\nThis is maybe my fourth time seeing it. I love it so much. Here’s my Ebert review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint<\/strong><\/em> (2020; d. Halina Dyrschka)
\nI will always regret not getting my ass to the huge exhibition of her work in New York – I think it was in 2019, pre-pandemic. I was introduced to her work through Personal Shopper<\/i> – thank you, Olivier Assayas – and this documentary is essential viewing. First film for the director. Highly recommended!<\/p>\n

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The King’s Daughter<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Sean McNamara)
\nTo quote Tommy Lee Jones’ first line in The Fugitive<\/i>: “My, my, my, what a mess.” I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Reckless<\/em><\/strong> (1935; d. Victor Fleming)
\nIf I were to show someone the work of Jean Harlow, in an attempt to show this person what she was all about, what her persona was all about, this would be one of the ones I would show. She’s not remembered correctly. She’s seen as a bombshell of maybe the Mae West variety … but in her best roles, she plays a sweet hard-working working-class girl who just happens to look like that and is made to pay a price for being naturally sexy. She’s judged as a “bad girl” by her peers, she gets a bad reputation, it’s assumed she’s a husband-stealer, a man-eater – but the natural Harlow wasn’t that at all. She’s treated unfairly because she’s sexy and because men happen to find her attractive. It’s not HER fault. Women are the ones who treat her poorly – which is the case here. She’s shunned from polite society because it’s assumed she drove her husband (Franchot Tone) to suicide. When … he was unhappy when he married her. It wasn’t her fault. I really like this movie. <\/p>\n

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\nSomething, Anything<\/strong><\/em> (2015; d. Paul Harrill)
\nI was restless one night, scrolling around looking for something to watch, not sure what I felt like. Do I want to re-watch? Sink into the familiar? Do I want something new? Comedy? Tragedy? For whatever reason, this one caught my eye – streaming on MUBI – and I liked the description. A woman suffers a miscarriage and has some kind of spiritual awakening following. It sounded intriguing. So I watched. And I felt like I had discovered buried treasure. It’s so good! I wrote about it here.<\/a> Please see this beautiful film!<\/p>\n

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Louder Than Bombs<\/strong><\/em> (2015; d. Joachim Trier)
\nSecond time for me. Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and Jesse Eisenberg in a thoughtful quiet drama about a famous photojournalist (Huppert), killed by an IED in Iraq, and the fallout in her family afterward. This isn’t a spoiler. You know from the jump she’s dead, and her life is seen in flashback. Her PTSD is acute, and she’s basically a temporary member of her family, always waiting for her next assignment in some dangerous warzone. <\/p>\n

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Suspicion<\/em><\/strong> (1941; d. Alfred Hitchcock)
\nAn old favorite. Cary Grant is so damn suspicious in this. He’s so strange as a leading man, strange as it is … his remoteness makes him an unlikely romantic figure (setting aside his looks, which I realize is difficult to do). But Hitchcock saw that remoteness, that strangeness, and thought he could work with it. He was forced to change the ending – since Cary Grant was a big star, and having him play a murderer was not acceptable – but in the next foray with Hitchcock – the mighty Notorious<\/i> – Hitchcock got it right, got it the way he wanted. Still: this is a fascinating glimpse of what Grant could do, his strangeness, his other-ness, his capacity for cruelty. <\/p>\n

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Pickup On South Street<\/strong><\/em> (1953; d. Samuel Fuller)
\nSuch a grim and brutal masterpiece. Posted a little bit about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Love Me Tender<\/strong><\/em> (1956; d. Robert D. Webb)
\nElvis’ debut! It’s so weird!!<\/p>\n

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The Worst Person in the World<\/strong><\/em> (2021; d. Joachim Trier)
\nJoachim Trier’s latest. I met Joachim Trier at Ebertfest in 2013<\/a> – my first time going – where his film Oslo August 31st was screened. I hadn’t seen the film before – it’s so good. It was also my introduction to Anders Danielsen Lie, who’s starred in most of Trier’s films – and was also recently seen in Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island<\/i>. He’s an incredible<\/i> actor and is also a doctor, with a full practice. He does both. Acting and medicine. Amazing. Trier’s films are so good, but this is a departure for him, in a way, and the film is miraculous. I felt “seen” – not to be corny – but the portrait of the life of a woman in her late 20s is so right on. The fact that we’re different generations doesn’t matter. So much she went through was what I went through, and it’s presented in a way that resists “making a point”. But it’s doing all kinds of interesting things, in interesting ways … it just came out. I highly recommend it. <\/p>\n

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Loving You<\/strong><\/em> (1957; d. Hal Kanter)
\nElvis’ second film. Where the powers that be (TPTB) attempted to actually deal with the Elvis phenomenon in real time. It’s an incredibly sanitized and in a way dishonest look at Elvis’ meteoric rise, with Lizabeth Scott – known mostly for noirs – playing what is, essentially, the Colonel Tom Parker role, the manager who wants to turn him into a “gimmick”. Surprisingly open about the whole situation. <\/p>\n

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Last Looks<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Tim Kirkby)
\nI kind of loved it. I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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Jailhouse Rock<\/strong><\/em> (1957; d. Richard Thorpe)
\nElvis’ third movie. His character is SUCH an asshole! But Jailhouse Rock<\/i> features his most openly carnal moment. I can count a couple others, but in general his movies were weirdly chaste. <\/p>\n

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Crossfire (1947; d. Edward Dmytryk) Went on a little Robert Mitchum kick, thanks to the Criterion Channel. Crossfire came out the same year as Gentleman’s Agreement, and both films deal with anti-Semitism, which was very much on American minds at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2627,4,31],"tags":[319,1514,2374,347,120,2493,2546,2095,2572,421,2558,1255,35,2480,259,306,518,2497,503,2599,2556,413,1694,2560,440,316,2177,2566,484,2306,2559,275,2637],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172787"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173902,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172787\/revisions\/173902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}