New to Me!
The Damned Don't Cry (1950) - Joan Crawford stars as a small-town housewife who abandons her marriage and chases fortune as a gangster's moll. One of the issues I run into with Crawford films is that she's such a magnetic onscreen presence with an obvious, penetrating intelligence that I struggle to imagine her beholden to the dopes she shares the screen with. The Damned Don't Cry circumnavigates this issue by rendering her an animal of pure ambition. She finagles and manipulates her circumstances impeccably until she becomes the victim of her own avarice. As melodramas go, Damned absolutely stretches credulity, but I still find the plot more plausible than Crawford succumbing to one more flannel suited dolt.
Crawford is stupendous, the supporting cast is solid, there are some spectacular deep focus shots, and some cool location work as well. I would love to see this theatrically some day.
Tin Men (1987) - From Barry Levinson, writer of Street Girls, Tin Men is a thoroughly lived-in, location specific, not exactly hangout but hardly breakneck story of awkward relationships and the aluminum siding business. Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, and Barbara Hershey are the principles and all three are absolutely phenomenal in this but the supporting cast is insanely stacked with terrific character actors. The performances are funny and relatable but the location work puts this one over the top for me. Such a wonderfully natural presentation of 60s Baltimore roots you completely in the film. In a supremely 80s choice, the soundtrack is anchored by anachronistic tunes from the Fine Young Cannibals. I actually thought this worked pretty well, I only wished they would have licensed a few more songs.
Cheap Thrills (2019) - Not quite sure what's kept me at arms length from Cheap Thrills for so long. It might be the poster image or my impression that it would be more of a gross out comedy than the tenser, darker film it really is. I had the good fortune of seeing Pat Healy giving an in-person talk/conversation about his career and you could really feel the enthusiasm people had for this movie. He also had some insight on the production which piqued my interest. Cool guy, glad I got to see him.
The movie is probably not going to be an all-time repeat watch for me but Pat is fantastic in it. It's less broadly funny than I imagined (thought there are some wildly hilarious bits). Not sure if it stands as a larger indictment of capitalism or fatherhood.
Theatrical Screenings!
I Knew Her Well (1965) - Absolutely stunning and completely devastating. If you are not somehow already in love with Stefania Sandrelli - you will be once you watch this. Gorgeous people, fantastic locations, brilliant (and unrelenting) pop tunes - and yet multiple sequences of heartbreaking cruelty. This played as part of the annual Italian Film Festival - the main focus of the festival is contemporary cinema but they always have at least one repertory screening and it is inevitably one of my favorite screenings of the year. Antonio Pietrangeli is not someone I'm terribly familiar with though my understanding is that he is a favorite among Italian filmmakers - I'll have to check out more of his work. The use of popular music in I Knew Her Well truly is genius and I made a youtube playlist if you want to check out some killer tunes.
Mickey 17 (2025) - The latest and gloriously expensive slice of sci-fi weirdness from Bong Joon Ho. Mickey meanders a bit but never plods and while I don't know how funny the writing is - I laughed very hard at the essentially slapstick physical gags. Pattinson acquits himself quite well in the dual role and the top billed actors offset some of the less charismatic supporting crew. The writing and the edit could be much tighter in my opinion, but even mid-tier Bong is more fun than another tepid franchise film.
Black Bag (2025) - Two reasonably decent genre entries from Soderbergh in 2025 is something worth celebrating. Bag is conceptually far less ambitious than Presence and yet I found it largely more entertaining. The combination chamber mystery and espionage film isn't as pointed or twisty as I might hope and the tension never reaches white-knuckle territory; but it's fun! It looks good and the actors seem to be having a blast. Really loved what David Holmes is doing with the music - likely my favorite part.
Lost Highway (1997) - When Emagine Willow Creek announced their David Lynch retrospective, I did not immediately grab tickets to my all-time favorite Lynch films. Instead, I opted to attend the films I've seen the least and didn't necessarily love at the time. I know many people have a special place for Lost Highway as their first Lynch film. For me, it was a first time I was able to see one of his films in its original theatrical run. I was coming off of a few years of marinating in his earlier work, but almost exclusively on home video. Unlike his previous films, I was not instantly taken with this as a young person. It seemed slicker, a touch reserved, maybe even commercial in its way. I still liked it, but it did not become part of my cultural DNA.
It's a better watch for me 28 years later (jeezus) with a thousand more noirs and pulp novels under my belt. Many of the parts I didn't like then still irk me, but I can see it more clearly for what it is now and I really can appreciate it. I'm mostly glad to have caught it theatrically as its charms are much more apparent on the big screen (and with theatrical sound). It looked fantastic with deep blacks and beautiful grain and the sound of the night highway nearly makes up for having to listen to Rammstein again.
Harry & Tonto (1974) - This was the secret 16mm show from local heroes, The Cult Film Collective. John intimated to me early on that this would be the screening and I was already thrilled. I love Art Carney in the 70s, I love this film in particular, and it's nearly impossible to see outside of an OOP dvd, a Japanese blu-ray that goes for big money, or legally adjacent means. When John then reached out to me to contribute to the printed program, I was beyond honored. I think I wrote a good piece and the programs looked great. The film was a 16mm television edit which I didn't realize going in. I didn't love that some coarser language and sequences were cut, but was surprised to see at least one scene improved by the edit. Either way, Harry & Tonto remains a thoughtful, humane, melancholy, and terribly funny look at lives in transition. It also provides a triple threat of cinematic urban time capsule goodness - capturing New York, Chicago, and LA of the 70s. I cannot for the life of me fathom why Art Carney's film work has been cast into OOP dvd purgatory but I keep hoping that some courageous and well-financed operation will restore them as they're all well worth your time.
Inland Empire (2006) - I'd seen Lynch's 3 hour, experimental, digitally shot, epic of anxiety exactly once before and it's not a space I relish existing in. Again, I'm glad to have a chance to revisit it and I'm especially glad to have caught it theatrically. I can lose myself in longer films, but I essentially need to be trapped in a dark box without distractions to stick with this one. However, just because it's challenging doesn't mean it's not interesting. There's no shortage of connective tissue to Lynch's other work running through this sprawling effort but the ties to Twin Peaks season 3 were the most apparent to me tonight. The much talked about SD digital format is a conundrum for me - I can't imagine this movie exists any other way and yet it feels like the thing keeping me at arms length from the piece.
Bushido (2024) - Trying something new this year, MSPIFF programmed some preview screenings for passholders hoping to build some word of mouth interest around some of the lesser known entries. Kazuya Shiraishi is a director I've been meaning to catch up to based on the reputation of his gangster films. Bushido (originally titled Gobangiri) is a historical drama centered on a vagrant samurai, his daughter, and multiple games of Go. The first act or so of the film has a methodical, lyrical quality to it and it focuses in on minute details - closeups of cherry blossoms, the detail work in an ornate comb, and the placement of many Go stones. As the film goes on it adopts some wilder, nearly psychotronic stylistic flourishes - flashbacks shown in a 70s Fujifilm patina, backdrops emblazoned with a nearly neon red Mt. Fuji, characters posed in dramatic stances more appropriate for the stage than real life. It moves effortlessly from a deeply realistic historical Edo to a ferociously tense Samurai tale. It's light on swordfights and heavy on Go, but I found it totally entrancing.
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