Mother, Stronger and Battle of the Sexes on Monday Morning Diary (October 9)
October 9, 2017 by wondersinthedark
by Sam Juliano
Summer temperatures are back as we approach mid-October, but I can hardly attribute this to any kind of climate change, right? After all, our ever-insightful Chief Executive has told us as much! This is the month of horror movies and festivals, as Halloween approaches. I’d like to share Jamie Uhler’s excellent capsule on the 1938 Dracula’s Daughter to get in the proper spirit here:
The film is a wonderfully concise and poetic bit of classic Universal Horror filmmaking; perhaps for the first time ever I saw beyond the gloomy, death atmospherics and saw the ‘other’ film resting within in. It’s a dark film to be sure, long I’ve been reminded of some of The Seventh Victim’s suicidal yearnings, but here I saw the clear playfulness ode to The Thin Man between Otto Kruger’s Dr. Jeffrey Garth and Marguerite Churchill’s Janet. A particularly tense scene, for example, is undercut by Janet pranking Jeffrey on the telephone midway through, with their mixture of light to heavy ribbing gleefully reminding me of Myrna Low and William Powell’s antics from two years prior. It also adds a dollop of sincerity to the films close, when Jeffrey is quickly willing to trade his life for Janet’s. Another sly bit of subverting of the traditional Dracula template is pitting our usual hero, Professor Von Helsing in Scotland Yard’s custody at the beginning of the film for the murder of Dracula. It’s a fresh way to set the plot in motion; it springs the titular daughter of the slain Dracula, Countess Marya Zaleska (the alluringly gothic Gloria Holden, giving Siouxsie Sioux a template to work off of 40 years later) into action. If you’ve been made a vampire by a vampire that has just died, you can break its hold over you, thus Marya dreams of being a normal, living breathing human, complete with the realities that that brings with it. Essentially, she wants to love again and be desired, making her eventual fall, and the entirety of the film itself, fated to a sad, tender end.
It’s often deemed a flawed film coming near the end of the run of original Universal masterpieces, but for my money it’s right there, and in many ways a perfect bridge from the Universal Monsters to the rapidly approaching, atmospheric, literate masterpieces of Val Lewton and company. For Horror this is obviously tremendously important, and when you add that contemporarily it’s been given a new reading for its homosexual (or perhaps better put, bisexual) subtext, (Marya is draw to young females throughout the film) you see that this is a film that, like Marya herself, deserves a much better fate.
The Caldecott Medal Contender series is underway and will continue into early February. The Greatest Television Series Countdown Part 2 has been pushed back two months for a number of reasons, one of which is I simply will not be able to write for two projects at the same time. The launch date for Part 2 will be Wednesday, February 14th. Obviously this means the second annual Allan Fish Online Film Festival will be later, but it will happen, and just a few days after the end of the television venture.
Lucille and I saw three movies in theaters this past week:
Mother * 1/2 (Wednesday) Edgewater multiplex
Stronger **** (Thursday) Edgewater multiplex
Battle of the Sexes **** 1/2 (Saturday) Edgewater multiplex
Saw Battle of the Sexes Friday. I am in agreement with your assessment. I especially liked Emma Stone and Bill Pulman’s work.
Ricky, thrilled to hear you watched BATTLE OF THE SEXES, and came in with a glowing response here. Yes Stone, Pullman and others in the case were excellent. Have a great week my friend!
Other than the baseball playoffs, I saw Blade Runner 2049, which was an enthralling slow-burn sci-fi noir that solidifies Villeneuve’s vaulted status. A must see –
Great review there David, much as I have stated. Yes I agree that Villeneuve is exceptionally talented. Have a great week my friend!
I’ve read that BR2049 is tanking at the BO, but the matinee showing I tried to see yesterday was sold out. Ohio Valley moviegoers getting out of Nate-generated rain and into Villeneuve’s post-apocalyptic drizzle. 2049 sounds like more Hollywood dystopia peddling, but the clips look stunning. I hope I’m incorrect assuming this. Big takeaway is that after 13 nominations, Deakins may finally win the Oscar he deserved for The Man Who Wasn’t There and Skyfall, That’s even more losses than O’Toole and Burton in the acting categories!
Ha, I love the way you frame that Mark! As far as the BO, I am very surprised, though I guess we need to wait a little longer before making any conclusions. It may pick up yet, buoyed by excellent reviews. I see our very good friend Pat (Perry) below saw it and wasn’t all that impressed. I had the opportunity to see the 7:00 P.M. showing at a local multiplex yesterday, but I balked at the nearly three hour length as I had some writing to complete. So true about Deakins who is poised to FINALLY win!!!!!! Yes he does negatively trump those two great actors together in failures. Have a great week my friend!
One vote for BR2049, saw it at matinee. Not sold out, had to go at 11:35a tho’.
In today’s macroeconomic environment, Blade Runner 2049’s nearly $32 million weekend haul is considered a flop.
carpetbomberz: I take it that you are saying you loved it then?
Hahahaha Marc, that IS funny! 32M is a flop?!
Yes that would be my take on it. I will add, not a fan of M.Night Shyamalan style plot twists requiring a montage reprise of previous scenes jammed in at the end. I didn’t like it for Sixth Sense or for any movie after that which “tried” to copy that trick. It’s Lazy storytelling writ large.
One more thing I would add is this essay by Bryan Alexander on BR2049. It’s not so much a movie as a tone poem:
Interesting rating for mother! – but is a divisive film to say the least. Stronger and Battle of the Sexes are both on my (VERY LONG!) list of films to see soon.
I saw, but was not particularly enamored of, Blade Runner 2049; I found it gorgeous but slow and sometimes downright dull. It’s not really my genre, but I liked the first film SO much better. Also saw the documentary SPIELBERG on HBO (excellent overview of his career) and the indie thriller SUPER DARK TIMES. The latter is an effectively terrifying story of violence and teen angst set in the early 1990s.
Pat, I was probably too harsh with that rating, especially since I will do what I normally do when I don’t like something to that extreme – see it a second time. I know the reviews were pretty much split down the middle. Sound sliek you have been doing quite well with the 2017 crop, even with a daunting list to negotiate. Haven’t yet seen the Spielberg documentary (would like to!) nor SUPER DARK TIMES which I absolutely will see very soon. I not will put that particularly film off any longer. i have taken note of your response to BLADE RUNNER 2049. Will see it this week but I’d wager I’ll probably wind up in agreement with you. Have a great week my friend!
Wanted to see Victoria and Abdul but it is being run at 7:30pm and 10:20pm and that is too late on a week night…will have to wait until it is streaming. Not a scary movie fan so will not be going there! this month! Truly enjoying the Caldecott Series and sharing it on FB.
Thanks for the good words and updates
Patricia: I know well how difficult it is to see films late on week nights. You set yourself up for a sleep session in most instances. Best to see that when the time of day yields the most favorable situation, and streaming sounds like a good option. I can never that you enough for your sponship and very kind words my friend. Deeply appreciated. Have a great week!
Re Jamie’s comment on Dracula’s Daughter: just purchased Daughters of Darkness with beautiful Delphine Seyrig as the sapphic bloodsucker. Hope it lives up to the erotic/stylish fanfare from 41 years ago.
I’ll shut up now.
Mark, I love when you speak here!!! I’m also a fan of DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS and of that ravishing Ms. Seyrig. I believe it does hold up magnificently!
Howdy Sam, I saw Ken Burns Ken Burns’ ‘The Vietnam War’***. It’s quite a brilliant piece of work with some caveats that keep it from the top teir of his work. The brilliant of the film is that it doesn’t go the route of other ‘Nam documentaries, with talking heads of the Macain/Kerry/Kissinger types – instead, they appear from news footage of the time. Another touch is the breadth of the viewpoints, with American pro and anti perspectives, North and South Vietnam voices too. And after the first two episodes, it’s 8 episodes of gruelling war, each segment introducing a new group of recruits, some of them never coming back, others are haunted survivors and our vivid guides to the horrorifying battles and skirmishes. It is quite exhaustive and with a brilliant use of footage, some times discordantly speeded up, at also played backwards. It’s as if we the viewers are living the story of the war in real time.
Where it falls down is in the well made by ignorant starting two episodes and, despite it’s length, ommisions that could have made it even more powerful.
Here are some flaws, which for me, diminished it’s power.
1/ The first segment makes sweeping generalisations about the Cold War that have been debunked again and again; such as the risible claim that a bankrupt Soviet Union had designs on taking over Iran and Turkey and other countries. It’s a hysterical Cold War claim that belongs alongside the ‘Domino Effect’ and had no reality in the real world.
2/ There is no mention of Ike’s ominous warning of a “Military Industrial Complex” taking over the reigns of policy making in the USA during the ’50s.
3/ An even more profound flaw is the shovelling of JFK with Truman, Ike, LBJ and Nixon as yet another war Hawk, ignoring the fact that he had long ago decided that he couldn’t trust his National Security State, and had already signed the orders for the removal of all US forces from Vietnam by 1965. It’s as if “Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived” didn’t exist, that James Douglas’ brilliant book about JFK and the forces allied against him as a peacenik President didn’t exist and the context of JFK’s avoidance of 6 wars prior to Vietnam didn’t exist. It sets the whole series off on the wrong tangent and the first two episodes are the weakest of the series.
4/ They talk about the use of Agent Orange, but not one of the harrowing pictures of the children born with distorted, heads, faces, and mishapen bodies is included.
5/ Though they included the opening salvos of the televised Vietnam Congressional hearings, they fail to show the upper tier of domestic political opinion makers such as JFK and MLK turning towards the peace movement. No mention of MLK’s flicking over the pages of ‘Ramparts’ magazine and finding the shattering images of the child victims of the war and his quite extraordinary speech against the War.
Nor those rare voices who spoke out against the Gulf of Tolkin such as the brave and principled Wayne Morris are reprented…
6/ And not a mention of any of the movies that first started to bring the War into the public’s awareness. Not one minute.
It’s pretty comprehensive, gripping and cinematic, despite failing to provide a proper perspective.
Anyway, been rewatching Seinfeld too, got inspired after the poll.