Geneviève (1964)
Streaming free at YouTube
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| NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #286 [archive] MAY 5, 2024 |
This short subject fooled me — right up until the closing credits, I thought it was a documentary about two young women out for a day of fun in the frozen wilds of urban Montreal.
Nope, it's scripted.
It meanders and doesn't have a plot or anything. That's a compliment. Feels like 28 minutes in the lives of a couple of hot babes.
Being a movie, both women are very pretty, but the plainer-looking one is Geneviève Bujold, at 22.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
When I was a kid, even after I could talk, I made a lot of babbling non-lingual noise and clicky sounds with my mouth and teeth, so my dad often (and usually nicely) called me Gerald McBoing-Boing. I thought it was a nickname he'd made up just for me, until finding and watching this short. Turns out Gerald McBoing-Boing is from Dr Seuss, and was made into this cute mini-movie.
It's about a boy who doesn't speak the language at all, only bips and boops and boings. So where can he go to school? What's to become of him? It's a dilemma, told in Dr Seuss's adorable rhyming patter.
It's enjoyable because it's only a few minutes, and because it stays close to the Seuss.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Germany Year Zero (1948)
Streaming free at YouTube
There's both economic and ideological hardship, with a sizable number of defeated Germans still firmly fascist, because beliefs don't abruptly change just because the Fuhrer blew his brains out.
Edmund is a little kid, part of the film's main family of hungry Germans. His father is dying of some unspecified illness, so the family's lost its source of income. The boy's older brother is an unrepentant Nazi, might face war crime changes, can't find work. His sister is 'friendly' with American soldiers, but insists she's not a prostitute and has no money. Edmund dedicates his days and his life to securing food and medicine for his pop and family, illegally working as a gravedigger — the only reliable work in post-war Germany.
He meets his former teacher, who's still spouting Nazi talk and also seems to be a pedophile, and the teacher gives Edmund a brutally bleak talking-to, basically, "Quit worrying about your father; he's sick and weak and deserves to die."
A recorded speech by the late Mr Hitler plays, while the camera slowly sweeps over the bombed-out, devastated city, and there's little doubt that Rossellini will end the film on a note of absolute and final hopelessness.
Germany Year Zero has it all — despair, misery, desperation, emotional annihilation, etc. The only thing missing is a kick in the nuts. It's among the harshest films I've seen, masterfully made and an absolute cure for optimism or a good mood.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Geronimo (1962)
Streaming free at Tubi
Connors plays Geronimo like he's a wooden statue of an Indian, and Martin mostly jokes around, providing the only humor on screen here. Denver Pyle and Adam West and also featured.
Forced to surrender and promised freedom on a reservation, the Apache are treated as wards of the state, allowed to farm but not to hunt, and regularly humiliated by their white overseers. Eventually, insulted enough, Geronimo leads his people on a G-rated warpath against America.
But the movie works as a good old-fashioned western, and all the natives speak in modern vernacular, which is an improvement over the standard grunts in movie scripts from previous decades.Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Geronimo (1993)
Streaming free at YouTube
Joseph Runningfox stars as Geronimo. Never heard of him, or anyone else here, but the natives are played by natives, and played well. Runningfox seems young for the role, but Geronimo was young, too.
The story starts with Geronimo at 16 years of age, tasked with effectively purchasing his bride-to-be from her father at the price of 16 horses. Where's a kid going to get 16 horses? He steals them from white folks, and it's enough to make me love the guy already.
If the film is to be believed — which usually would be unwise, but this one seems trustworthy — the Apaches didn't invent 'scalping' of their victims; some Apaches were themselves scalped by the Mexican cavalry, and the survivors took the technique as a retaliatory inspiration.
The victories of the real Geronimo often involved slaughtering white folks, which is not something Americans are willing to watch on TNT, so everything's tidied up. A few of the whites' atrocities are shown, and even a few is more than you've seen in most movies.
Geronimo is shown as infallibly wise, but this movie is a lot better than the 1962 telling. It makes for a fine drama, and at least makes me think I know a bit more about the man.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Gerry (2002)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
With dialogue presumably improvised when neither star was feeling talkative, the film is often wordless for five or ten minutes at a time, and the longest conversation is about Wheel of Fortune. The credits list both men as Gerry, but they also say 'gerry' and 'gerried' as slang, the meaning known only between them.
We're not told much about the two Gerrys, because they're not what the movie's about. It's about the desert they're walking through, which is the same in every direction. Gerry is a meditation on that, on the wrong turns we all make along whatever trails we walk.
It's minimalist drama against a maximalist backdrop, or vice versa. 'Experimental' seems to describe this, so is the experiment a success? Oh yeah, this is definitely worth watching.
But in their second day being lost, as Damon and Affleck walk wordlessly for several minutes, you might notice that their lips aren't chapped.
Verdict: YES.
5/5/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
Get Carter (1971)
Get Out (2017)
Get Yourself a College Girl (1964)
Getting Wasted (1980)
... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
especially starting with the letter 'H'.
Just add a comment, below.
Those post-war Rossellini films are all pretty good. My favorite of his is Voyage To Italy. Has one of the bitchiest performances ever by George Sanders. Funny and heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? Wow. George Sanders is one of my favorite actors from his era, and he's at his best when he's bitchy. Funny and heartbreaking has to be better than just heartbreaking, which was Germany Year Zero, so Voyage to Italy goes on the list, thanks.
DeleteI'm surprised you liked Gerry. Pretentioius and boring. They kept walking and I walked out.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Gerry is weak, but somewhat interesting conceptually - taking Bela Tarr's long roaming takes (which Tarr of course ripped from Tarkovsky) and kind of incorporating video game aspects as well. Which is funny, because I seem to remember in Van Sant's Elephant, the two killer kids play a video game version of Gerry!
DeleteGerry isn't weak at all. Doug's review isn't a rave but I loved it. Not every movie in the desert has to be Hidalgo or Tremors or Wake In Fright.
DeleteIt comes down to expectations, I think. If you expect a hike or lost-in-the-desert movie like others you've seen, Gerry will disappoint you. I usually come in with no expectations, not even knowing what a movie is about or whether it's comedy, drama, documentary, etc. For me, Gerry was a success.
Delete[Now accepting recommendations for movies,
ReplyDeleteespecially starting with the letter 'H'.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films:_H
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
ReplyDeleteThe Hands of Orlac (1924)
Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary
Happiness (1998)
Happiness of the Katakuris
Harakiri (1962)
Harlan County, USA
The Hateful Eight
ReplyDeleteHead (1968)
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse
Heart of Glass (1976)
The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany
Hell Comes to Frogtown
Hell or High Water (2016)
Hester Street
ReplyDeleteHigh and Low (1963)
The Hole (1960)
Home Alone
Home Movie (2001)
Homebodies (1974)
Homicide (1991)
Hospital (1970)
ReplyDeleteThe Host (2006)
Hour of the Wolf (1968)
House (1977)
The Human Condition (1959, 1959, 1961)
The Hunger (1983)
The Hurricane (1937)
Habit (1997)
ReplyDeleteHappy Accidents (2000)
Happy Together (1997, Wong Kar-Wai)
Harsh Times (2005)
Häxan (1922)
Heartland (1979)
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Heaven's Gate (1980)
Heist (2001)
ReplyDeleteHellzapoppin' (1941)
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
A History of Violence (2005)
Holy Motors (2012)
The Holy Mountain (1973)
Honky Tonk Freeway
ReplyDeleteHoosiers (1986)
The Hot Spot (1990)
The Howling (1981)
Hukkle
The Hurt Locker
Hard Eight (1996)
ReplyDeletejtb
Some of these I've seen, most I haven't, and all the haven'ts are now on the list. *Thanks!*
DeleteThanks also for not recommending The Human Centipede.
Believe me, I thought about it. It's not half bad, I kind of like it. Of course it would be better with George Sanders in it.
DeleteAlmost anything would.
DeleteSomething that's "not half bad" only makes me wonder about the other half.
"Hangover Square" was mentioned in our Linda Darnell love-in (one can dream), I downloaded it but haven't watched yet.
ReplyDeleteHaving worked in politics I've always been a fan of the original BBC "House of Cards" series, there were three separate mini-series of 4 one our episodes each, made over about 5 years. The original series and the conclusion (titled "The Final Cut") are the best, though. They've aged quite a lot which is kind of inevitable when it comes to political thrillers, especially one as timely as this (the original is about a theoretical succession to Margaret Thatcher, and was aired when she was being deposed in real time). But Ian Richardson is a fantastic actor and is really delightful as the amoral Tory asshole who wrecks people for power but sometimes also just because he can.
Oddly I've never seen the American reboot with Kevin Spacey and probably won't. The original is just so British and I like it that way. Like an American Doctor Who, the thought of an American Francis Urquhart fills me with No.
My wife and I watched several episodes of the Americanized House of Cards, but found it distasteful for non-Kevin Spacey reasons. I'll add the British version to the list. It'll do better for me if it hates Margaret Thatcher, of course.
DeleteHangover Square was already on the list, and I'm looking forward to it, but at the moment I'm wondering how Dr Kimble's going to get away from Lt Gerard.
Ian Richardson was apparently a very moral person and insisted that his character get his comeuppance in the end, like old Hollywood code films. The lines that come out of their mouths are incredible:
Delete"There are too many old people in this country, it's a problem."
"Betsy I saw beggars on the street today, I assumed the Vagrancy Act would take care of it."
"That statue of Thatcher is vile. Can't we have the Arts Council move it somewhere else?" "You forget, we abolished the Arts Council." "Oh, right..."
Great lines. You remembered these, or didja have to look 'em up?
DeleteI'm not a big fan of the code, but I love comeuppance. It's the movies' key advantage over life.
Speaking of moral people, Columbia University announced tonight on the national broadcast news (no, I don't know which network -- I'm married: I've not held the Net Channel Changer for years) that "We can no longer guarantee the safety of Jewish students at Columbia". Oddly, 95 years ago the University of Munich made the same announcement regarding Jewish students on THEIR campus. When they come to take the Jewish students away, I suppose I'll not object, because I am not a Jew.
ReplyDeleteJohn
I suppose I should add for the sake of clarity that this is not a movie.
DeleteJohn
I keep reading that Jews are in danger from the protesters, but I haven't figured out what's the danger. If someone's violent or threatening, arrest 'em, of course.
DeleteI might have had a little bigger picture in mind. It might help to get the anti-Jewish people who aren't students the hell off the campus BEFORE they start threatening and knocking over jews. Just an idea.
DeleteJohn
Anti-Jewish people are no fun at all, and threatening and/or knocking over Jews should not be tolerated, on a campus or anywhere.
DeleteThere seems to be a huge incentive to portraying students that most of the country would say are soft, from highly elite backgrounds, as murderers-in-waiting. I'm not a genius but that would make for a tidy equivalence to the actions of the people they are ostensibly protesting. We've already got an equivalence between the people shooting and the people being shot, and now we've got another one between the people shooting and the pedestrians saying "Maybe this is wrong."
DeleteI doubt I agree with them 100%, I doubt I agree with the IDF, the Likudniks, the Israeli opposition which doesn't seem much better or even the thousands thronging the streets in Tel Aviv yesterday demanding a ceasefire either. But I think I've been to this show before and I might have even been fooled by the spectacle, but I try to at least learn from dumb things I've done. I don't think that placing a murderous army (and some who are not at all murderous), a terrorist group, refugee old paw paws and babies in a disgusting ghetto and 19 year old sophomores calling for peace (and some of whom are calling for more than that) on the same moral and ethical level is a sound conclusion.
That's the longest recitation of "Two wrongs don't make a right" I've ever heard. I'm not entirely sure that a simple proposal that non-students be ejected from campuses for a while warrants all that.
DeleteJohn
It's definitely long but I had hoped it communicated more than that.
DeleteThis simple proposal referenced proto-Nazi currents in Weimer Germany. Which is, I think, the very definition of "all that."
Indeedy, we have all been to this show before, and I no longer attend. War crimes, daily, is what's happening in Gaza, and has no 'equivalence' to what's happening on a few US college campuses. The people calling for suppression of the protests have no complaints about the daily war crimes, which is all anyone should need to know, to know who's on the right side and who's not.
DeleteCollege campuses are public spaces, and the "simple proposal that non-students be ejected from campuses for a while" is wildly unAmerican.
DeleteNobody ever checked my ID as I walked onto the campus at Univ Washington, non-student, there only to attend a protest. I'll take free speech over any such "simple proposal" to silence it.
When I enrolled in college in 1968, tuition was $72 a quarter and books another $80 or so (depending). Averages are tough in this area, but a non-Ivy league state college bottoms out at about $10,000 a year and the kind of school that people want to graduate from starts closer to $30,000 annually. Grad school, which many professions now require is considerably more expensive. So disrupting weeks of classes is kind of a big deal for non-millionaire students.
DeletePeople get banned from college campuses all the time. I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt they're in the same category as public parks. People occasionally attend college and pay for it the next 20 years to actually learn something. Non-students who are disrupting classes for weeks at a time should be arrested and fined. Students should be given plenty of warnings, and if they get violent should be expelled. Obviously, there are grey areas.
People who confuse Netanyahu, a fascist asshole, with Israel, a nation state that grants citizenship to inhabitants whatever their religion are like international citizens who confuse Trump with the United States.
It's a complicated world that doesn't easily yield its subtleties to broad, descriptive statements.
John
The protesters are being arrested on the lawn or in the administration building; they're not disrupting classes. And Arab citizenship in Israel is more akin to Jim Crow voting rights in the South than to an equality Israel could be proud of.
DeleteBut I'm pretty sure you know this.
That would be a nice world, but UCLA hasn't had classes this week at all and Columbia Law has been down for a week. Maybe fewer lawyers is a good thing, but at least a dozen other schools have cancelled classes, not because people are protesting in classrooms -- of course they're not -- but because it's dangerous to get to classes. It would be less dangerous if colleges just allowed the protesters to do what they wanted, but that doesn't seem to be a great solution.
DeleteJeez, I was there last time. I was a marshal in a dozen protests at CWSU. (I was a protester with a red armband, charged with keeping demonstrations peaceful). Of course, nearly all the protesters were peaceful, but one or two percent grabbed rocks and broke windows. We busted them and put them in our own detention facility. The purpose, besides believing in peaceful demonstration, was to keep the damn Ellensburg police and the National Guard off campus by policing ourselves. I know how much damage one or two percent of a crowd can do.
These are different times, and anti-Jewish sentiment is running high. Welcome to the thirties.
John
Solidarity is free. Charge "outsiders" with trespassing but that's no different than what the students in encampments are being charged with. "Outside agitators" is the oldest canard in the business, brandished by the Birmingham good ole boy and the anti-union boss and the Fox News commentator. The student encampments didn't originate with "outside agitators" and random troublemakers would have nothing to do if the tents weren't already pitched. The students themselves are stopping their classes.
DeleteIf it is the 1930s, it's in cynical politicians equating relatively powerless people trying to stop a war with the powerful forces that have a capability and are showing an actual desire to wage it. The student demands here aren't "purge the Jews" or "go home to Israel." It's to demand that their universities' endowments (some of which are larger than the GDP of whole countries) no longer invest in Israeli industries, in conscious imitation of the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa.
That's it. That's the cause. They're demanding an accounting change.
It was never dangerous to get to classes at Columbia or UCLA. The protests are not anti-Jewish, and it's a falsehood when school administrators, cops, and now you pretend that they are.
Delete* should read "stopping their COMMENCEMENTS," Columbia I believe entered into some kind of keycard-holders-only lockdown but what they're citing is that the encampments are in areas where commencement ceremonies are held.
DeleteI'm so accustomed to lies from the right-wing, when I first heard "these protesters are dangerous!" my kneejerk reaction was that's just another lie. But I gave 'em every chance to present it as truth. For the first weeks of the protests, as the handwringing from administration grew louder and then the cops were called, I kept scouring the articles for violence or threats of violence from the protesters. Kept finding nada.
DeleteClosest I could come was that some passers-by felt uncomfortable, which is a by-product of any protest. And it's awfully easy to find articles written by Jewish students and faculty saying they've never felt endangered.
None of the college campuses I've been to have ever required keycard access or ID checks. Maybe to get into a lab building or something, but never on the walkways and lawns. It's happening now, only for one reason: to shut down peaceful protests.
The protests won't change anything, all the more reason it's stupid to squash them so ruthlessly.
DeleteNetanyahu is a fascist, but I have nothing against the Jews. Fuck Israel, nothing but a warmonger nation.
Wow, you guys really got wound up. Of course some of the protesters are anti-Israel, and Israel is sort of a Jewish state. I like the idea of attacking the Israeli economy characterized as "an accounting change". Netanyahu has to go -- and soon. But I don't think he was the guy who attacked Israel and used murder and rape as weapons to once again try to drive Israel into the sea. Youall will eventually do that, but I hope it's after I'm gone. I've already shed enough tears for humankind.
DeleteJohn
Dunno, suggesting that companies invest their money elsewhere seems like a pretty bloodless and responsible way to influence a government's behavior to me. We're not even talking about government-level sanctions, like on Cuba, Russia, North Korea or Iran. Anyone else can invest if they feel motivated by goodwill or profit. Just a private institution taking their money collected from dead billionaires and those exorbitant tuition fees and buying treasury bonds or shares in Tyson Chicken.
DeleteThis seems like a very non-radical and normal thing to organize over compared to massive annihilation.
Anony — The protests might be successful. They aren't demanding an end to the slaughter. What the students want, from what I've read, is for the University to ① call for an end to the slaughter, and ② divest their investments in Israel. Reasonable requests, IMO.
DeleteI hadn't noticed until Granville said, but that's the same as what anti-apartheid protesters wanted a couple of generations ago. Maybe that was antisemitism too.
John — "Wound up"? It happens, but I'm not so much angry as *weary* of lies and dishonest arguments.
DeleteGranville — Nothing much to say to you, since there's no disagreement. I do wonder why Cuba, Russia, North Korea or Iran are the Four Horsemen we're supposed to hate so much that buying a Cuban cigar remains against the law in the USA.
DeleteBut we're all OK doing business with Saudi Arabia and Communist China and other shithole countries clearly far worse than Cuba.
Money is everything, more important than morals, academics, genocide. If you think Columbia is going to say no to money just becaise it's genocide money, I just wish you were right but you're not.
DeleteI think we've always got to have to have boogiemen to justify this:
Deletehttps://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
I know it's common to blame the military industrial complex for every act of venal chicanery but I think that really is the truth here. With no defined enemy, people who get no benefit from swords beat them into plowshares.
Hamas are not murdering innocents anymore. Israel is. Continually. Unyielding. With glee.
DeleteBut it doesn’t matter what Hamas is doing, did, or will do. It’s all political pretense anyway. If it wasn’t that it would be something else. Israel wanted to cleanse the area finally and take over, and this seemed like a good excuse as any to rile up the zombie masses and rally them around the genocide campfire. You’re falling for it. You’re part of the problem.
Fuck politics and fuck you
DeleteAnony: Columbia is not going to say no to money, because Columbia is Columbia. Trinity College Dublin has agreed with its student protesters, as has Evergreen College and Cal State Sacramento. There may be others.
DeleteJeez, I feel uncomfortable being the voice of optimism. Generally I agree that protests accomplish little or nothing.
Granville — "The United States spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined." Must be getting worse; last time I heard, it was more than the next three or four combined.
DeleteOf course, it's not "defense," and I hate using evil peoples' lingo. The Department of War was a much less BSy name.
One reason "it's common to blame the military industrial complex for every act of venal chicanery" is because it's often true.
14-3 — It's not clear who you're replying to, and I'm sure I'm falling for a lot of things, so tell me where I'm wrong.
DeleteI'm against killing people, especially in large numbers and without justification, and against people who like that sort of thing. I'm against silencing dissent, even on college campuses, and against people who want to.
My opinion matters only to me, of course. Nobody in charge cares what little people think, unless there's a million of us and we're loud, which doesn't happen often.
Claude — Now that Captain Hampockets is dead, you're maybe the most pessimistic person I know and love. Never change, man.
DeleteLove you too, buddy
Deletehttps://youtu.be/oZNQ_OoYwQE?si=6IXU188gBi3M7Jz3
Ha!
DeleteWatched it again, so Ha! Ha!
. . . and while we're still in the G's, Get Shorty. Gene Hackman is a fine comic actor.
ReplyDeleteJohn
I've gotten Shorty. Might get him again some time, too.
Delete