What I’ve Caught Up With, December 2024 Part 1:
Film: Beast (2022)
For the average American, there can be no greater “Man vs. Nature” story than someone isolated on the African veldt. That’s Beast in a nutshell. Dr. Nate Samuels (Idris Elba) has been recently widowed. He and his daughters (Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries) take a trip to a reserve in South Africa where Nate met his wife. Simultaneously, the area is plagued with poachers who kill all but one of a pride of lions. The last remaining lion goes rogue and starts killing indiscriminately. What this means for us is that Nate and his daughters, along with Nate’s friend Martin (Sharlto Copley) are going to be attacked by the rogue lion. As a high concept it’s not bad, but this story has been done better.
Film: The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain (2019)
The police tell us that they are there to serve and protect, but the experience of a disturbing amount of people is that the police are a menace and exist to protect the elite class and corporate property. In 2011, an ex-marine with bipolar disorder accidentally triggered his medical alert system. Less than two hours later, he was dead at the hands of the White Plains, NY police. This is a harrowing film told essentially in real time. If there was ever a clear case of what “defund the police” means in terms of funding social services and mental health services, The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain is that case. It’s not an easy watch, but it is an important one.
Film: The Night Porter (1974)
One of the more disturbing films I’ve seen in awhile, The Night Porter isn’t upsetting because of gore but because of the story. Max (Dirk Bogarde), a night worker at a Vienna hotel, was formerly an officer guarding a German concentration camp in WWII. One evening, he re-encounters Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), with whom he had a sado-masochistic relationship while she was interred for being the daughter of a socialist. They rekindle their affair to the benefit of no one, throwing a potential wrench into the affairs of Max’s comrades, who are preparing a mock trial for him. This is sexually charged, and not always in a good way—Rampling singing a Marlene Dietrich song while wearing part of an SS uniform is a noteworthy example. The film almost made Bogarde give up acting. It’s a sort of a non-musical post-war Cabaret with all that that entails.
Film: Deep Cover (1992)
I like Laurence Fishburne, so a film that puts him not only as the main character but also the narrator is one that is going to be interesting. Deep Cover has Fishburne playing a cop thrown into deep cover to bring down a drug smuggling operation. Things go badly quickly and things get political quickly as well as everything gets more convoluted, complicated, and deeper. The story is a good one, but the cast—Jeff Goldblum, Gregory Sierra, Charles Martin Smith, and Clarence Williams III in particular make this worth watching more than the screenplay. This is right in the heart of the drug-fueled urban crime dramas of the 1990s, but is somehow kind of forgotten. How come Fishburne doesn’t do more voice work? He’s got the pipes to pull it off.
Film: Alien: Covenant (2017)
The Alien franchise, despite some missteps, is still beloved by science fiction and horror fans, which makes any entry into the franchise both potentially interesting and worrisome (no one wants a repeat of Alien: Resurrection). Alien: Covenant is the sequel to Prometheus, and while it offers some new insight into the biology and genesis of the xenomorphs, in a lot of ways, it’s a remake of the first film. A colony ship intercepts a signal that is clearly of human origin even though there can’t be humans there. For purists, the change in xenomorph “birth” might be the biggest issue. This isn’t bad, but I’m not convinced that it’s necessary, either.
Film: The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)
A sort of film noir, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry is badly marred by its ending. Bachelor Harry (George Sanders) works as a pattern maker to support his two sisters in their gigantic house. Everything is thrown into chaos with the arrival of Deborah Brown (Ella Raines), who immediately becomes the object of Harry’s affection. Younger sister Lettie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) fears what her life of leisure will become if he marries, while older sister Hester (Moyna MacGill) is all in favor. Plotting and murder ensue. The plot is fun, but this is another one of those movies where the formerly-rich-now-impoverished main characters still have a huge house and servants. The cheat at the end drops my score on this by ½ to a full star—it's that disappointing.
Film: 3 Godfathers (1948)
Probably the least-Christmasy Christmas movie around, 3 Godfathers has bank robbers Robert (John Wayne), William (Harry Carey Jr.), and Pedro (Pedro Armendáriz) encountering a dying woman giving birth in a broken-down covered wagon. Before dying, she asks them to look after her child, asks them all to be godfathers to the child, and immediately dubs the baby Robert William Pedro. The men now feel charged to carry the child across the desert while being pursued by a posse (led by Ward Bond). It’s a fine little film, and we get a couple of allusions that this is all happening right before Christmas, not the least of which being William’s insistence that they are a new version of the three wise men. When they literally follow a star in the east toward a town called New Jerusalem, the allegory gets a little heavy, but this is a surprisingly effective film.
