The powerful documentary Apocalypse ’45 takes never-before-seen footage of WWII action and blends it into an experience that brings new insights to familiar history.
Apocalypse ’45 takes on the war in the Pacific in 1944 and 1945; the Japanese military knew that its defeat was inevitable, and their strategy was to avoid unconditional surrender by making its price to the Americans too painful. What happened was horrible, and filmmaker Erik Nelson helps us appreciate that with his spare construction – Apocalypse ’45 is essentially three elements – the film itself, the voice over by survivors and starkly evocative titles.
First, Nelson selected from 700 reels of archival film from the National Archive, digitally restored in 4K. It’s in color, and that makes a huge difference to those of us who have to be reminded that WWII was not fought in black and white.
The color and the 4K restoration makes these events look like we were living through them, too, and humanizes the people in the film, making them more relatable. The feeling for the audience is similar to what Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old did for those who fought WWI. The somber fatalism of Marines in landing craft and the joyous relief of sailors and Marines in victory parades are palpable.
The shipboard footage of kamikaze attacks and the pilot’s eye views of strafing missions are breathtaking. The footage of a morass with a movie clapboard “Route 1 Okinawa Mud” helps us understand the challenges of moving an army through muck, even without enemy fire.
A few nonagenarians and centenarians have still survived WWII, and Nelson adds their memories in voice overs. Their reflections are unvarnished, and some of the Marines’ views of the Japanese adversaries are hard to hear. But the overall effect is an understanding of how awful this was:
About the planned invasion of Japan: “We didn’t think that the war would end before 1949.”
About the use of flamethrowers: “The smell was terrible…They could run (on fire) about 20 yards and that was it.”
“War is hell, but I never visualized hell being that bad.”
In the amazing account of a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor: “That’s when everything blew up.”
Nelson ties together the footage and the testimonies with stark white-on-black titles, all the more chilling by their matter of factness. About the liberation of the Philippines): “100,000 civilians and the entire defending Japanese Army were killed” (and, indeed, 93% of the 350,000 Japanese soldiers and sailors died). About the fire bombing of Tokyo: 100,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated.
Nelson’s titles tell how the US manufactured enough Purple Heart medals for the invasion of Japan, based on American casualties in the conquest of Okinawa. After the surrender, those Purple Heart medals were warehoused – and the stockpile has been sufficient to supply every American conflict since 1945.
As Apocalypse ’45 begins, it may seem like a regular WW II documentary with some new imagery, but it becomes more and more powerful as the images, personal testimonies and narrative titles have their effect.
Apocalypse ’45 is now streaming on Virtual Cinema and eventive; I watched it at the Pruneyard Cinemas. It will premiere on the Discovery Channel on Labor Day weekend.
Writer-director Amy Seimetz’s offbeat fable She Dies Tomorrow is difficult to categorize, except as completely original and unlike anything we’ve seen before.
At first, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on, as we follow Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), who recently has bought a house and is ready to embark on a fling with Craig (Kentucker Audley). But then Amy has an epiphany – she’s going to die tomorrow. No, she hasn’t decided to kill herself – she just is, for lack of a better word, prophesying that something will cause her death tomorrow. That’s pretty heavy and, as anyone would, she becomes fixated on her impending mortality.
Of course, it’s also absurd. How can anyone predict the date of her own natural or accidental death? But here’s where things really get crazy. Amy tells her geeky chemist friend Jane (Jane Adams), and afterward, Jane is convinced that she, also, will die tomorrow. Jane, in her pajamas, crashes the dinner party of her brother Jason (Chris Messina) and unloads her realization. Soon, Jason, his wife and their two guests have been “infected” – and become dazed by the belief that they, too, will die tomorrow. Virus-like, the phenomenon spreads to a seemingly well-grounded doctor (Josh Lucas), a poolside slacker (Michelle Rodriguez) and others.
And here’s another absurdity – how can a psychological disorder (if that’s what this is) be instantly contagious? She Dies Tomorrow is unrelentingly deadpan, so the absurdism is morbidly comic. Each character reacts differently to his/her infection, and this can be pretty funny. Some are profoundly distraught, while one dumps the boyfriend she has found tiresome. Amy’s own ordering of a very special leather jacket is especially perverse.
For all the humor (and this is not guffaw-producing humor), She Dies Tomorrow is also one scary movie. Of all the genres it touches, it is probably closest to horror.
The entire cast is very good. Sheil and Audley starred in Seimetz’s swampy neo-noirSun Don’t Shine.
For good reason, film critics boost films that break the mold, and She Dies Tomorrow has an Metacritic score of 80. John DeFore wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “Movies like this are why art houses exist.”
She Dies Tomorrow is available on all the major streaming services.
Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels in 1931’s THE MALTESE FALCON
When we think of The Maltese Falcon, the 1941 John Huston film justifiably comes to mind. After all, it’s arguably the first film noir and undeniably influential. It’s also got Humphrey Bogart as an indelible detective Sam Spade and an unsurpassed ensemble cast. But this is only one of three movie versions of Dashiell Hammett’s source novel.
The 1931 movie was a sex comedy, and the 1936 version was a screwball comedy. All three films are united by Hammett’s cynicism.
THE MALTESE FALCON (1931)
unclad Bebe Daniels in 1931’s THE MALTESE FALCON
The first cinematic The Maltese Falcon came out in 1931, only one year after the novel. It was directed by Roy Del Ruth with its screenplay adapted by Maude Fulton, Brown Holmes and Lucien Hubbard. Sam Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez, born Jacob Krantz to Austrian Jewish parents and recast by Hollywood into a Latin Lover.
Cortez’s Sam Spade is lecherous, cocksure, leering and pawing. Indeed, if this Pre-Code The Maltese Falcon is about anything, it’s about sex. It opens with a woman adjusting her hose before leaving Sam Spade’s office, evidence of a just-completed sexual encounter.
Bebe Daniels plays Miss Wonderly/Brigid O’Shaughnessy as sexually aggressive. She’s shown taking an obviously post-coital bath, and deals out lines like “who’s that dame wearing MY kimono?“.
At one point, a large banknote is missing and Spade takes Brigid into an adjoining room and strip searches her. This 1931 movie is the only Maltese Falcon that contains this sequence. What we see on camera is an apparently nude Brigid clutching her clothes behind the door.
As entertaining as this raunchy version is, much of the drama is drained drama from the final confrontation. Spade produces Chinese merchant Lee Fu Gow as an eyewitness to Archer’s murder, resulting in Brigid’s conviction. Then Spade shows up to jail to buy premium perks for Brigid while she is incarcerated. Off-screen, Wilmer kills Gutman and Cairo.
According to film noir expert Eddie Muller, this 1931 Effie (Spade’s secretary), played by Una Merkel, is the closest screen portrayal to the detective’s secretary in Hammett’s source novel.
The Hays Code prevented the re-release of The Maltese Falcon in 1936, which led to the 1936 remake. Because it’s so risque, the complete version of this 1931 film was not screened again in the United States until 1966.
SATAN MET A LADY (1936)
Bette Davis and Warren William in SATAN MET A LADY
That 1936 remake was directed by William Dieterle, with a screenplay by Brown Holmes. It’s more of a screwball comedy than a whodunit. And it’s an actor’s movie – with the stars riffing off their already established screen personae.
Like the title, all of the characters are renamed but recognizable. Warren William plays the shamus Sam Spade, Bette Davis is the Brigid fatale, ditzy Marie Wilson is the Effie, Alison Skipworth is a female take on the Gastman character and Arthur Treacher’s Travers fills the place of the Cairo character. The gunsel is played as an obvious homosexual by purring Maynard Holmes (an effective scene stealer despite being uncredited). And the MacGuffin they’re all chasing is The Horn of Roland, not the black bird.
Warren William was the King of Pre-Code, a leading man who delighted in playing shameless scoundrels. That’s what audiences were expecting, and that’s what they got in Satan Met a Lady. William’s Spade is flamboyant and always looking for a quick buck (and a quickie). Bette Davis matched up well with William, as she did earlier in the political satire The Dark Horse.
Alison Skipworth was already 72 when she made Satan Met a Lady, and her jovial but devious performance is at least as good as Sydney Greenstreet’s in the 1941 version.
Quips fly back and forth in a ping pong of witticisms. And you can’t take your eyes off Maynard Holmes and Marie Wilson whenever they’re on the screen.
THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
Humphrey Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
John Huston directed and adapted the screenplay for the 1941 The Maltese Falcon. This is the most famous version because it is by far the best. It’s darker, and virtually every character is richer, and the performances by Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor are riveting.
Huston’s Maltese Falcon is often called the first film noir, and it’s certainly more influential than the other contenders. Huston and cinematographer Arthur Edeson (Casablanca) teamed up to create innovative camera shots and a a setting every much as shadowy as the characters. You can see The Maltese Falcon‘s look and feel in the entire genre of film noir.
Right away, audiences knew they were looking t something different. We see the shadow of the lettering “Spade and Archer” on the office floor. Spade’s phone is lit by outside streetlights when he gets the call about Archer’s demise. Many faces emerge from the shadows, dramatically lit. Spade leans over to kiss Brigid, and we see over his shoulder, out the window to Wilmer’s stakeout on the street below. Look for the shadows of the curtains blowing behind Spade in the final scene.
You can play a drinking game with the times that Brigid has bars across her, from the shadows of Venetian blinds, the stripes on cloths, and, finally, when the bars of the elevator are pulled across her face.
Bogart was a familiar face in crime movies, usually as the villain dispatched by the hero. But The Maltese Falcon put him on the A-List. Bogart’s Sam Spade was the streetwise, cynical guy looking out for himself, but who still adheres to a code, just like his upcoming iconic roles in Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep and Key Largo.
Humphrey Bogart trying to assess Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON
Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a tour de force. Adorable, captivating and seemingly vulnerable, Astor’s Brigid is SO manipulative. Bogart’s Spade is so jaded that he expects the worst from everyone, but even he can let his guard down for Astor’s Brigid.
Astor was an uncommonly beautiful girl, and, beginning at age 15, she made 49 pictures in the Silent Movie Era. Her best role had been at age 29 in Dodsworth, filmed while she was being tormented by scandalous child custody litigation. Here, the 35-year-old Astor is seasoned enough to play a crafty woman who uses her sexuality without looking like that’s what she’s doing.
Superb performances abound, especially Sydney Greenstreet as the affable but sinister mastermind Gutman and Peter Lorre as the fey hustler Joel Cairo. As Wilmer, Elisha Cook, Jr., delivers the finest depiction of a weak punk, wannabe hard guy before John Cazale’s Fredo in The Godfather.
This was the first movie for the 61-year-old stage actor Greenstreet and the beginning of his on-screen pairing with Peter Lorre. Huston and Edeson film Gutman from below to emphasize his girth and menace. Upon receiving really bad news, the nervous Cairo melts down and Gutman clutches at his carotid artery, but then recovers and embarks in merry greed.
Dashiell Hammett’s world view – that no one can disappoint you as long as you expect them to act only in their craven self interest – pervades all three Maltese Falcons. But Bogart’s Sam Spade, as written by John Huston, elevates the 1941 version. Ever sympathetic, Bogart’s Spade is never cuddly; his partner is not yet in the ground when Spade has the sign painter remove the partner’s name from the office door. And, as would any man, Sam can have feelings for Brigid, but he won’t be her sap.
Elsiha Cook, Jr. finds out that Humphrey Bogart is on to him in the 1941 version of THE MALTESE FALCON
Gordon Lightfoot in GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND
Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mindis a surprisingly interesting documentary about a now genial singer-songwriter that I hadn’t thought of for decades.
The biodoc emphasizes Lightfoot’s talent as a songwriter and his importance to Canadian music scene. Just when it starts getting too reverential, the more lively tidbits from his career and personal life start rolling out.
Notably, the inspiration for the lyrics of Sundown is revealed:
I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress
In a room where ya do what ya don’t confess
Sundown you better take care
If I find you been creepin’ ’round my back stairs
Amazingly, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was recorded not only on the first TAKE, but the on first time Lightfoot’s band had ever PLAYED the song.
Gordon Lightfoot in GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND
Physically unrecognizable from his hey day, the 81-year-old version of Lightfoot is pretty likeable. He is modest and irreverent about his own work (I hate that fuckin’ song). He is also grateful for his blessings, sober, open and regretful about the mistakes in his personal life.
Heck, I enjoyed spending an hour-and-a-half with the guy. Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind is available on Virtual Cinema; I watched it at the Laemmle.
In the fresh and perceptive coming of age filmAn Easy Girl, it’s summertime in Cannes, and local working class girl Naima (Mina Farid) has just turned 16, with an internship lined up in a hotel kitchen. But first, her 22-year-old Parisian cousin Sofia (Zahia Dehar) comes for a week’s visit. Sofia catches the eyes of two much older guys, Andres (Nuno Lopes) and Philippe (Benoît Magimel), and the girls are invited to party on Andres’ massive yacht.
Sofia lives her life for “adventure and sensation”, and works her stunning looks so she can rely on the kindness of strangers. She doesn’t even carry cash, putting everything on the tabs of male admirers.
Naima is no shrinking violet and no prude, but she has NO IDEA about the extravagance and carnality of Eurotrash hedonism. The audience may cringe at the plopping of Naima’s comparative innocence onto a zillionaire’s party yacht with her enthusiastically decadent cousin. We’re expecting that Naima may be victimized, corrupted, or have a sexual awakening,
But here’s what is so fresh about An Easy Girl – thanks to the female director and co-writer Rebecca Zlotowski, the UNEXPECTED happens. Naima learns more about life and human behavior than she did at school or would in her internship.
As Jeanette Catsoulis points out in the NYT review, the French title can mean “An Easy Girl” or “A Simple Girl”.
Sofia, fully committed to the most shallow of lifestyles, is decidedly not the ideal role model. But she turns out to be a canny observer of people and passes along some invaluable tips about how to handle social situations.
Most unexpected, however, is what Naima learns from Philippe. At first, he seems to only be Andres’ diffident wing man. But Philippe has reflected on his own life, and his lessons to Naima about her own self-worth are indelible.
Benoît Magimel in THE EASY GIRL
It’s a superb performance by Benoît Magimel (The Piano Teacher, The Flower of Evil). Flashy roles get the awards buzz, but Magimel’s understated interpretation of the still-waters-run-deep Philippe is masterful.
Because the story is all from Naima’s point of view, Mina Farid is on-screen in every scene, and she’s exceptional. Nuno Lopes (the one good thing about the epic snorefest Lines of Wellington) is fine as Andres.
Zahia Dehar is perfectly cast for Sofia, perhaps shockingly so. In real life, Dehar is famous in France for parlaying her national notoriety as a teen prostitute to the rich and famous into her own fashion line. Her lips and figure are like a caricature of Brigitte Bardot’s.
This is a remarkably genuine and non-exploitative coming of age story. An Easy Girl is a NYT Critic’s Pick and it is streaming on Netflix.
Itsaso Arana in THE AUGUST VIRGIN. Photo courtesy of Outsider Pictures.
In the lovely and genuine The August Virgin, 33 year-old Eva (Itsaso Arana) is between relationships, not defined by any career success, and her biological clock is ticking. She knows it’s time for a reset. In August, Eva borrows an acquaintance’s apartment in another Madrid neighborhood and sets off on a series of strolls, in search of possibilities as yet unknown.
Many madrileños escape the city’s oppressive heat for the month of August. But Madrid is still filled with street festivals and tourists. Eva meanders around town, encountering old friends and making new ones. As Eva notes, in Madrid’s August, expectations are relaxed.
Eva is purposeful about shaking things up, but she has no plan other than to be open to the possibilities. That openness, with its fluidity and randomness, leads her to her moment of reinvention.
Eva is played by the film’s co-writer, Itsaso Arana. What’s so singular about Arana’s performance is that her Eva, as dissatisfied as she is with her current situation, is always comfortable in her own skin. She’s never desperate or needy (except when trying to negotiate a reluctant door lock) and always confident enough to engage with a stranger. At one point, the Spanish pop star Soleá sings, “I’ve still got time. I’m still here.”
THE AUGUST VIRGIN. Photo courtesy of Outsider Pictures.
The August Virgin’s other co-writer is director Jonás Trueba, and this is his sixth feature. I recently watched his next most recent film The Reconquest (La Reconquista) on Netflix, and it’s another intensely personal and genuine story, about two 30-year-olds reconnecting 15 years after a teen crush. Jonás Trueba is the son of Oscar-winning director Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Chico & Rita).
Several critics have seen Trueba’s work as an homage to French New Wave filmmaker Éric Rohmer, but I found The August Virgin, with Eva’s serial conversations (real, probing conversations), reminded me of the more accessible work of Richard Linklater.
Madrid itself is on display here, with its searing daytime sun, and the liveliness of the streets, tapas bars and after-hours clubs when the sun goes down.
Trueba and Arana allow Eva her process, and she samples one experience after another, seemingly with the faith that one of them will lead her to where she wants to be. This is not a film for the impatient, but I found its two hours enchanting.
The August Virgin is on my list of Best Movies of 2020 – So Far and will be available to stream beginning Friday, August 21 on Virtual Cinemas, like San Rafael’s Rafael or Laemmle’s in LA.
The first surprise in the short documentary The Speed Cubers is that there are people – very young people – who can routinely solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than eight seconds. Then we’re not surprised that they have world records and world championship competitions.
But then we learn that an AUTISTIC teenager has been dominating the competition. And we learn the story of his parents’ love and persistence. And then the story of his relationship with the former champion he unseated. It all combines into a quick cinematic stir fry of profound decency and friendship.
Director Sue Kim distilled the world of speed cubers, the compelling personal stories of the two protagonists and their relationship into a tight forty minutes.
The amiable documentary The Booksellers slips us into the obscure world of antiquarian book collectors and dealers. It’s a passion that few of us share, but, for the few, a passion it is indeed.
The subject here (old books) is LITERALLY dry. The sparks of interest come from the people who treasure and covet them. These folks are mostly, but not all, old white men. The introduction of a younger female dealer, fiery and committed, brings some welcome energy.
The conflict in this story is with the times – with the trajectory of books themselves driving the future of book collecting.
The Booksellers can be streamed from Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube and Google Play.
An agreeable star playing a disagreeable character, Gemma Arterton elevates the melodrama Summerland. Arterton plays a writer self-isolating in an English country village. Self-absorbed, crusty and even mean, she finds herself being assigned to care for a young boy evacuated from the London Blitz.
Why is she like this? We learn that she has been damaged, first by the childhood loss of her father, and then by the loss of her great love. It turns out that everyone in Summerland is damaged by loss – after all, there is a devastating war going on. And, the English are not disposed to letting out their feelings.
Summerland is about addressing the needs of one child. The war has made his parents unavailable, his guardian is reluctant and poorly-equipped, and the emotional capacity of his community is not apparent.
There are two surprises in the plot, and the biggest one is unpredictable; both are contrived – you can either suspend disbelief or not. I was watching with two women who couldn’t get past the unsympathetic behavior of the writer to embrace the story.
Once again, Gemma Arterton proves that she is versatile and can carry a movie on her own. Her work has ranged across genres to the Bond Girl in Quantum of Solace. In the light comedy Tamara Drewe, the main joke is that the main character suddenly transforms into someone who looks as stunning as, well, Gemma Arterton. In Gemma Bovery, Arteron and the French comic actor Fabrice Luchini deliver a smart, contemporary take on Madame Bovary.
The supporting cast is excellent: Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle and lots of TV), Penelope Wilton (Downton Abbey), Tom Courtenay (Oscar-nominated decades apart for The Dresser and Doctor Zhivago) and Sian Phillips (Livia in I, Claudius back in 1976).
This is the first feature for writer-director Jessica Swale, She did an excellent job directing the child actors – Lucas Bond and Dixie Egerickx (now starring in The Secret Garden) – to fine performances.
Summerland is essentially a melodrama that finally arrives at a heartwarming conclusion; as such, it’s moderately satisfying. Summerland is available from all the major streaming services
The infectious We Got the Beat by the Go-Go’s is fun itself, distilled into a song. The documentary The Go-Go’s tells the story of the all-female band.
There is a familiar arc to every documentary about a rock band. Scrappy and hungry musicians perform the music they love in obscurity, before being suddenly thrust into worldwide fame and more cash than they could have imagined. Then the bubble is burst by some combination of drug abuse, internal jealousy, creative differences, personality conflicts and fights over money. Usually the survivors look back with pride in the music, nostalgia about the good times and regrets that they didn’t handle it all with more maturity.
The Go-Go’s fits in that framework, to be sure, but it’s about women. The Go-Go’s have been the only all-female band to write their own music and play their own instruments ever to have a number one Billboard record. They achieved that in 1982, and it hasn’t been duplicated since.
All five Go-Go’s thankfully have survived and each shares her experiences in The Go-Go’s. They are an open, engaging and likeable lot.
There’s a tidbit about the gentlemanly class shown by The Police. And we learn why none of the Go-Go’s is proud of their appearance on Saturday Night Live.
This is a modest film about a singular moment in popular music. The Go-Go’s is available on Showtime.
