Nazis. I hate these guys.

Not sure what to make of this fast-paced and violent gore-fest produced by impresario JJ Abrams. On the one hand, it is a quasi-horror film set in middle of Nazi Germany during the fiercest fighting of WWII. Om the other hand it kind of meanders a bit, especially in the first 30 minutes trying to set up what ends up being a not-entirely-satisfying final act, where the, ahem, monsters appear. On the other, other hand the cast of mostly unknowns is pretty good. On the other other other hand the plot is almost impenetrable. Some not-so-evil Nazi Doctor from Central Casting is doing some unexplained experiments on French townspeople, turning them into 1000 year soldiers? Say what? Meh.

A Beautiful Film

It is so interesting to go back to a film that one loves after a long absence. It offers one a chance to re-assess the film, and to some extent gauge whether initial enthusiasm was warranted.

In the case of "A Beautiful Mind", it was. Big time.

I was fortunate to have been able to see this Ron Howard gem when it first came out, in the theaters. In fact, I can remember where I saw it, the Century Theaters in Mountain View, California when I was living in Sunnyvale, California. Not that any of that matters, but the film had such a profound effect on me it is important to remember where I was when I first saw it. That profound effect was produced both by the mastery of the film-making and acting, and also by how deeply it affected me.

Despite its detractors -- and there are some -- I really don't understand how anyone cannot find this to be a stunning, remarkable film full of passion, meaning and artistic beauty. It starts with the story, which is probably largely true, concerning the descent into the Hell of severe mental illness that Nobel-prize winning Mathematician John Nash experienced in the 1950s. It continues with the light but expert hand of filmmaker Ron Howard who, IMHO is one of the most under-rated filmmakers working in this country. And it continues with a lovely score by the late, great James Horner and ends with remarkable, memorable performances from an A List cast, including the Oscar-winning turn by Jennifer Connelly as Nash's long-suffering wife, and a great group of supporting players lead by another criminally-underrated actor, Josh Lucas, Ed Harris, Paul Bettany and the wonderful Judd Hirsch.

The main event here, is the story of Nash, and his Character, played with almost Shakespearean power by previous Oscar-winner Russell Crowe. As much as Crowe's star has faded a bit in recent years it burns "with a hard, gem-like flame" (John Ruskin) here, as Crowe takes on a very, very difficult task: to morph from the arrogant intelligence of a younger Nash, through the Hellish flowering of Schizophrenia - perhaps the worst of all emotional disorders - and finally emerge triumphantly on the other side. Not so much at the Nobel Awards ceremony, which is of course his triumphant public moment, but in his ability to come to terms with his illness, accept that he does need medical treatment but also that he needs to fight the demons that besiege him for himself, for his wife and for his students. This is what great film-making is all about.

Why this actually made me cry upon re-watching is because my Family has had its own share of Mental Illness. It is not appropriate to share the details of that (out of respect for their privacy) in a Public Blog, but sufficed to say I know very much what those who knew and loved Nash went through watching him struggle with this terrible disease. The film tugged at my heart strings not in any cliched or manipulative way, but in a very powerful and personal way.

Thank you Ron Howard, Russell Crowe but most of all John Nash.

"Bad Times" is almost an understatement

It is pretty hard to do Spoilers for this film, as the title "Bad Times at the El Royale" is pretty self-explanatory. A apparently legendary hotel, the El Royale, on Lake Tahoe serves as the location -- and memorably serves as kind of a character in the film -- for some really Bad Times. That is kind of it.

Except that the characters who come to stay at the El Royale evolve from thinly drawn stereotypes (in the First Reel) into ones with real depth, who, most importantly, all have Secrets of some kind they bring to the hotel. It helps that the film is perfectly cast, from Cyntha Erivo's solid turn as an aspiring songstress, to Jeff Bridges' sly take on a Catholic Priest who is clearly not -- from the opening -- what he says he is. There are others (such as John Hamm's apparent oily vacuum cleaner salesman) but Chris Hemsworth really steals the show here as the Jim Jones-esque cult leader.

As has been noted, the story, acting and photography are all top notch. What really makes "Bad Times" more than just another Tarantino knock-off is how skillfully Goddard builds to the Tarantino-esque (or Peckinpah-esque) closing act. It would be spoiling things to say what happens, but I think Goddard earns the rather violent denouement, and even the hopeful ending frame.

Good stuff.

Take that, Bembridge Scholars

Well. Just re-watched this still-delightful romp from Stephen Somers and crew and I can say it holds up well. Just getting ready to celebrate its 20th Anniversary, so it is worth looking at its stamina.

If you are one of those Digital SFX nerds then, well, never mind. The Digital SFX were great in 1999 and today look like crap. But, who cares? Good films are about story, character, acting and perhaps the visuals. And the visuals are actually pretty great, if a bit cheesy. Is it even important to re-cap the very, very simple plot? It is the plot of every Mummy movie: Europeans/Americans dig up a previously long-buried sarcophagus, and really, really bad stuff ensues.

The main event here is the breezy, well-written script and the solid casting. On the one hand you have the swarthy Brendan Fraser at the height of his career (where is he now, BTW?) and on the other the Oscar-winning Rachel Weisz in a role she might have come to regret she ever took, early in her career. Its hard to imagine the same actress who played Ralph Fiennes's dead wife in "The Constant Gardener" making cow eyes at Fraser, but, well, there you have it.

This film is just plain fun, unless you don't like resurrected Mummies turning to sand and blowing out of hotel room windows when cute little cats are held up to them. And who doesn't?

Shiver me timbers, its the loveliest actress of Hollywood's Golden Age

There is so much to say about this "sparkling" romantic 'comedy' from what is truly the "Golden Age of Hollywood." But, so little...er, cloud storage. What? I have personal connections to the film and DVD (image is from the Fox re-issue), and critical interest in the film itself. Let's break this up into those two categories.

Personal connection. When I was growing up in LA the television show, 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir' was one of the shows I watched. On Broadcast TV. Using a TV antenna. Yes, I am that old. So, when I was made aware many years later that the TV show was based on a classic film, I was all-in. Personal connection, part deux. I have the very good fortune to be married to a lovely lady who used to work at Fox Television. When I would visit her we would walk from the so-called 'Die Hard Tower' where her cubicle was and visit the Studio, where we could lunch in perhaps the most famous Commissary still standing. Even better, we could shop in the Studio Store and get some meaningful percentage off our purchases. There I stumbled across this wonderful item, the DVD version of the film re-issued under Fox's "Studio Classics" imprint, and including both a very good transfer from a high quality print, and numerous extras such as a marvelous A&E bio of the inimitable Rex Harrison.

But I digress. As I often do.

Critical interest. There are numerous 'ways in' to TG&MM I hardly know where to start. Maybe I should start by saying I loved it the first time I saw it, and I loved it, again, when I watched it last night. Although I really wanted to buy an HD video version on Amazon Prime I held back and inserted the DVD into my PS4 to see how good it would look on my Sony Bravia with surround. In its original 1:33:1 Aspect Ratio it looked, and sounded great, BTW, thanks to a decent upscaler on the PS4.

Fox assembled the 'A Team' for this one, Joseph L. Mankeiwicz as helmer, the late, great Bernard Herrmann doing what he did so well with the Score and a cadre of excellent folks doing photography, lighting, etc. But of course the main event here is Rex Harrison as the salty sea captain/ghost and the great Gene Tierney as Lucy Muir, along with one of my favorite under-the-Radar performers, George Sanders as the handsome 'RL' Lothario who nearly sweeps Lucy off of her feet. Plot is not complicated: Lucy is newly widowed, and, along with her young daughter takes a cozy sea cottage in a remote village on the coast of England. The first reel hasn't even hit the cigarette mark (lol) and said Salty Dog 'appears' to Lucy to try to re-claim his beloved home. This sets off a warm-hearted romance between widower and ghost that, on the surface seems pretty straightforward. Of course it isn't, and the complications that ensue are both conventional (for their time) and non-conventional.

Tierney is one of my favorite Hollywood stars because she played her females with a proto-Feminist tartness that was irresistible. In this story, she refuses to take the patronizing advice of the Leasing Office fellow and leases a haunted house, is very decidedly not afraid of no ghost (pre-figuring the recent all-female update of 'Ghostbusters', perhaps) and invites Gregg to match wits with her, and finally she waltzes in to a noted London publishing house to try to get a book published. It was not unusual in the early 1900s for a woman to do this, but it would have been unusual for her to have a story that wasn't about "women's issues" or the like. Lucy's co-written biography of a male sea captain subverts the conventions of the time, and tickles the fancy of the very male publisher, and all the while Tierney balances Lucy's of-her-time femininity with gender-neutral wiles.

As I said, a lot to talk about here. Let's just end with Sanders' strong turn as afore-mentioned real life love interest. Didn't we see this movie before? Yes, it was Hitchcock's 'Rebecca' and, ironically, Sanders was the third stool of a menage-a-trois with a woman who, in the film's present timeline, is now deceased. Rebecca 'haunts' Hitch's film in some very Gothic ways not dis similarly to how Harrison's Captain Gregg 'haunts' Gull Cottage. And Sanders chews the scenery as he sweeps Lucy off her feet, setting off a jealous streak in the Phantasmagorical Gregg - which injects yet more warm-hearted humor into this classic.

If you haven't seen it, get the to Amazon Prime - or buy the DVD (or Blu-ray if that is available).

A welcome break from the emotional bog left us by "Infinity War"

My headline is not original, as many reviewers have noted that this next MCU entry is a nice repose (riposa) from the heavy weight we all felt after the last Avengers movie. But, if it were just that, it would feel like a the cinematic equivalent of a pallete cleanser - that is, the in-between food that gets us ready for the next major course in the meal. Ant Man and the Wasp is anything but. Featuring an even more developed main character, ably played by Paul Rudd, and a typically great surrounding cast, this second Ant-Man feature develops its own Mini-MCU by having the eponymous micro hero involved in a significant quest of his own, to save the life of his mentor's wife, and love-interest's Mother. No spoilers here, but getting to see the lovely Michelle Pfieffer in anything these days is a treat, in and of itself. As much as she and Michael Douglas have aged, the film places them in age-appropriate settings while not taking for granted their acting skills or considerable visual appeal. Great stuff, all around, highlighted by the inimitable Michael Pena, who I just love. Even after the disastrous, "CHIPs". And that is saying something.

You came and you gave. Without taking?

Is Barry Manilow ever rolling in his grave. Wait, is he still alive? Sorry, Barry. Can I just say, to start, that this is not a feel-good movie? Unless your idea of feeling good is falling on a massive chainsaw in the third reel. I mean, wow.

Can I also just say that everything you have heard about Panos Cosmatos' acid trip-cum-horror flick is true. For all the right reasons. This is one f-ed up story, executed by one f-ed up director, acted with f-ed up intensity by Nic Gage, who may be the most under-rated American actor in history. But more on that later.

Not that the plot really matters, but Gage plays Red, who, with his wife, the eponymous "Mandy" - played with searing, zombie-like effectiveness by Andrea Riseborough, lives a kind of quasi-Hippie Utopian life somewhere in a forest. In AD 1983, we are told. Again, not that details matter here. What does matter is that an odd Death Metal Cult lead in a show-stealing performance by Linus Roache happen upon them and then do what Death Metal Cult's do...fill in the blank. After "it" happens the real fun begins, as Red turns Angry Avenger from Central Casting. Sufficed to say Red gets.the.job.done.

Big Time.

I have been sparse with plot and details because what matters here, more than anything including Gage's career-defining performance is Cosmatos' unique visual style. He clearly has a DP but, like Steven Soderbergh it kind of doesn't matter because what comes at you, visually on the screen seems to have been mined from the very depths of Cosmatos' somewhat unhinged mind and soul. Red's visceral revenge fantasy plays out on a palatte of dark tones, with various reds and other hues washing over -- like the blood that washes over his face, and never seems to leave -- and combines a pastiche of crude animation, almost cheap SFX (no CGI here) and a grainy look that echoes 1980s horror films. If Stanley Kubrick had had a music video baby with George Romero, this what it would have looked like.

Oh, and speaking of music. I have rarely seen a film where the score has had more of an impact on the overall experience, than in "Mandy". It is tragic that this was "Sicario"-scorer Jóhann Jóhannsson's last film score, as he died of a drug overdose in Berlin in February of this year.  His haunting, lyrical 80s era synth score nails the pathos and drama of "Mandy," and, just as no one could have played Red with the feral intensity of Nic Cage, no one could have written a better score than Jóhannsson'. I still have the lilting chord progression, which reminds me of Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour" in an almost creepy way, echoing through my head.

I have a theory that one out of every 5.3 films Cage makes is good, some are great. I really liked "Drive Angry" which shares some DNA with "Mandy". I don't really know why he has to make so many crappy films, but if it is because he needs to keep working because some a-hole Manager lost a bunch of his money then so be it. Keep working, Nic. Keep giving us films like this and we will forgive the Nicole Kidman family thrillers. Or "The Season of the Witch." OK, we can't really forgive that.

Cage brings his trademark rage to "Mandy" and then amps it up to a level I think few actors would even dare. As has been pointed out in other reviews, there is a scene about halfway through the film where Red is in the bathroom, trying to take stock about what has just happened to Mandy, and the rawness and honesty of his scream could make Lee Strasberg come out of his grave. Wait, is Strasberg still alive?

This is truly great film-making, from a director I personally am going to keep my eye on. On Amazon Prime of course in HD with the volume turned way up on my surround system, this was nirvana. Now I need to go and see it in a theater, for heaven's sake.

Enjoy.