Movies I watched in March
Scarecrow (1973 - J. Schatzberg)
French Connection II (1975 - J. Frankenheimer)
The Birdcage (1996 - M. Nichols)
Behind the Candelabra (2013 - S. Soderbergh)
Kafka (1991 - S. Soderbergh)
Bubble (2005 - S. Soderbergh)
Let Them All Talk (2020 - S. Soderbergh)
Anora (2024 - S. Baker)
Watchmen: Chapter II (2024 - B. Vietti)
End of the Road (1970 - A. Avakian)
Topper Returns (1941 - R. Del Ruth)
Logan Lucky (2017 - S. Soderbergh)
Black Bag (2025 - S. Soderbergh)
Going Highbrow (1935 - R. Florey)
Tampopo (1985 - J. Itami)
The Fifth Element (1997 - L. Besson)
Shin Godzilla (2016 - H. Anno & S. Higuchi)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988 - P. Kaufman)
Closely Watched Trains (1967 - J. Menzel)
Broken Rage (2024 - T. Kitano)
The Double Man (1967 - F. Schaffner)
Shin Ultraman (2022 - S. Higuchi & I. Todoroki)
22 movies this month. I started off with three films starring Gene Hackman.
Scarecrow was a very 70s New Hollywood road movie with Hackman and Al Pacino as a couple of drifters. The acting was great but I was tired and wasn't in the right mood for a formless comedy/tragedy.
French Connection II is an interesting sequel but not as good as the original. The movie has a gritty Euro realist feel but Popeye Doyle as a fish out of water in Marseilles could have used a plot. Hackman gave an excellent performance going through withdrawal after getting hooked on heroin by the bad guys. Hackman played the straight man in
The Birdcage and mostly just had to react to Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. A fun movie for Hackman to have on his resume.
I next went ham on Steven Soderbergh films to get me in the mood to see
Black Bag in the theater. It's available on digital this week and is pretty good. Unfortunately it didn't do well at the box office but at least Soderbergh's Presence was a hit earlier this year.
Behind the Candelabra is a star vehicle for Michael Douglas playing Liberace. He and Matt Damon were good and Soderbergh knows how to shoot Las Vegas.
Kafka was Soderbergh at his artsy fartsy-est with Jeremy Irons as a Kafkaesque protagonist in a pastiche of Kafka's stories and 19th century Prague. It had more in common with a David Lynch than Soderbergh's slick modern productions.
Bubble is a great example of the director's versatility. It's a small town murder mystery shot on a tiny budget with amateur actors. There wasn't much to the story so Soderbergh wrapped it in a brisk 73 minutes.
Let Them All Talk is the director's take on the old lady buddy comedy genre a la 80 For Brady or Book Club. He's always been good shooting opulent settings and does a nice job here on a luxury liner. The movie was fun fluff and Meryl Streep and Candice Bergen were good.
Logan Lucky is another breezy entertainment about a robbery. The heist is ridiculous as are the characters but it's a lot of fun.
End of the Road has a Soderbergh connection as well. It's another quirky 70s film that bombed on initial release and was forgotten before Soderbergh sponsored a re-release in 2010. It's a very strange story with an even stranger visual style. There's a
decent print on YouTube --the first ten minute are really something.
Anora has been discussed at length here. I liked it.
Watchmen Chapter II is the second of a two part animated version of the classic graphic novel. It's worth a watch if you're a fan of the comic although the animation and voice acting aren't top tier.
I watched a couple of mediocre golden age comedies w/ Mrs. Eephus.
Topper Returns was a sequel to the charming ghost story Topper. Hollywood struggled with sequels 80 years ago because Topper Returns was inferior in every way. The plot was like something out of Scooby Doo.
Going Highbrow was a silly B movie with a contrived plot that relied on mistaken identities--it had a few laughs though. My noodle ranking got me in the mood to watch
Tampopo again. I'd forgotten how disjointed some of the bits were but I can't think of many movies that display a greater love for food.
I saw a trailer for
The Fifth Element at the theater when we saw Black Bag and it piqued my curiosity. I saw it during its original release but not since. It's still (Chris Tucker voice) crazy as hell but watchable in all its ridiculousness. I wanted to see
The Unbearable Lightness of Being after reading the book. The movie concentrates on only two of the characters; it covered the plot points without conveying the philosophical complexity of the characters.
Closely Watched Trains is a Czech film that came from the same time and place where Unbearable Lightness took place. It's an offbeat little comedy that'll probably stay with me for a while.
The Double Man was a dumb 60s spy movie without a lot going for it except for Yul Bryner's inimitable charisma.
Finally, ending on three odd recent movies from Japan.
Broken Rage is from Yakuza auteur Takashi Kitaro. It tells the same assassin story twice, once straight and the second time for laughs. Neither treatment is great but it's a fun concept and doesn't overstay its welcome at only 67 minutes.
Shin Godzilla and
Shin Ultraman are two-thirds of a loosely coupled trilogy of kaiju movies. The Godzilla one was more about the Japanese government's response to the crisis than the monster itself. The Ultraman one threw in a love story and some monster metaphysics so it was the better of the two. Both had cool low budget effects that combined CGI, miniatures and actors in monster suits. But the best of trilogy is still Shin Kamen Rider which I watched last year.