Hawkeye (1988)

This is a cheapo action movie, written and directed by George Chung, who later played an Elvis impersonator in the Nicolas Cage movie Honeymoon in Vegas (not to be confused, please, with Leaving Las Vegas).

In this dreck, Chung plays ‘Hawkeye’ Hawkamoto, a Vegas cop who doesn’t play by the rules (yawn). His sidekick is a mouthy black cop played by stuntman Chuck Jeffreys, doing a good impression of Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. Actually, his Murphy impression is the most accomplished element here, but when a blatant rip-off is the best thing going for a movie, well…

The script has a few clever lines, but the acting is weak, the sound recording is muffled, and I would wager fifty bucks that most of the actors are amateurs, as most of the dialogue sounds stilted and nervous.

I’d forgive everything if there was a clever thought or some passion behind any of this, but there’s not.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Hawks and Sparrows (1966; Italy)

Totò, a popular comic star of Italian cinema, plays a sad-faced old man, taking a long walk across the countryside with his adult son. Where they’re headed and why is never mentioned, but on their long walk they see birth, marriage, and death, and meet an assortment of eccentric characters, including some hippies and a sentient crow who tells the men a story about ancient monks.

Written, directed, and occasionally narrated by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Hawks and Sparrows does a bang-up job of smuggling big ideas into an otherwise light and fluffy film. The two men’s conversations, with each other and with strangers, go deep into religion and Marxism, but with enough laughs that none of this ever seems even slightly didactic or preachy.

The opening credits are sung, and the tune was composed by Ennio Morricone.

The movie is certainly odd, but so are you, right? It’s unafraid to be smart and strange, and as these two men and a crow walk across the horizon, they’re broadening yours.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Häxan (1922; Sweden)
a/k/a Witchcraft Through the Ages

This one caught me by surprise. It’s an old silent movie, restored so it looks great, and with successfully spooky music added — but wait, it’s a documentary.

Pretty sure I’ve never seen a documentary from the silent era before, and it starts with lots of intertitles, so many that the beginning of Häxan is like reading an article, one line at a time. There are occasional illustrations, but little movement, so it’s like a slide show.

We’re 13 minutes into the film before the imagery starts living and breathing and doing things, which is my baseline for what constitutes a ‘motion picture’. Once things start moving, though, and the viewer’s expectations are correctly aligned, what follows is excellent.

Häxan has several ‘chapters’, each a black-and-white but colorfully tinted reenactment of something horrid relating to the history of supposed witchcraft. There’s a primitive autopsy, a horned demon strangling someone, a zombie’s stroll through a cemetery, and torture and execution overseen by a priest because, of course, all this is done in God’s name.

Yeah, even the victims believe they deserve the punishment that’s coming.

The film has surprisingly vivid special effects, memorably including witches flying through the night, but all the visuals, even ordinary shots of people walking, talking, and lying in bed, are staged and filmed stylishly. You can’t look away, especially with the tinting and always-eerie music.

What’s best is that the film ends with writer-director Benjamin Christensen explaining that all the strange things he’s dramatized, from visions to kleptomania to the inability to feel a pinprick, are not signs of witchcraft but symptoms of physical or mental illness. There’s a rational explanation for everything!

And of course there is, but I didn’t expect to see that in a movie from 1922.

Verdict: YES.

After that serious review,  I must also report that the movie ends with the word ‘Slut’ on screen, and Google Translate verifies that it’s the Swedish word for “The End.” Good for a giggle, yes?

♦ ♦ ♦ 

The Hayseed (1919)
Streaming free at YouTube

Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle stars with his trusty sidekick, Buster Keaton. Buster runs a grocery store, and gets into a water-fight against the local constable, while Fatty is a mailman who abandons his appointed rounds to play hide-and-seek with a pretty woman.

It’s 21 minutes of slapstick and smiles if not laughs, with a very well-trained dog, and an elaborate dance sequence toward the end. 

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  

The Heart of the World (2000)

This very short short is designed to mimic an old silent movie, and/or previews of coming attractions. Dialogue-free but with a pulsing rock instrumental soundtrack, it’s sort of the story of one woman in love with two brothers, but it’s more a mood than a movie, and the mood is joyous.

Written and directed by Guy Maddin, and it’s delightful.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦  Heartbeeps (1981)

Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters play household robots that have been returned to the factory, sidelined due to damages. Awaiting repairs, they practice social conversation and pre-programmed banter with each other, leading to binary batting-of-eyelashes and — could it be love?

This is ridiculous, obviously, but fits snugly into Kaufman’s kooky niche of the comedy universe. Kaufman and Peters’s metallic outfits shine nicely, and their facial makeup must’ve been awful to wear but looks appropriately bizarre. The score by John Williams almost makes the story seem briefly human in spurts, but none of this actually works, seriously or comedically or romantically.

Verdict: NO. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

Lenny (Charles Grodin) and Lila (Jeannie Berlin from Bone) are on their honeymoon, which is an inconvenient time for Lenny to meet and fall for another woman.

The woman is Cybill Shepherd, who’s pretty, and not up to anything evil, but she sees her flirtations with Lenny as harmless fun, while to him she’s alpha and omega and everything in between. He’s ready to divorce his wife of three days.

I saw The Heartbreak Kid in its first release, 1972, and was mildly offended at the movie’s premise. I felt sorry for Lila, the forgotten bride, and annoyed at Lenny for forgetting her. Pimply and adolescent, I thought grownups were supposed to fall in love and live happily ever after. Maybe sometimes things don’t work out and couples get divorced, but not on their honeymoon. C’mon.

Watching it 50 years later without my long-gone pimples and idealism, it’s become a much better film. Grownups are idiots, of course, and among their many idiocies they often get married because one of them was hot and the other was horny, or because they’re ‘supposed to’, or because they think they’re in love but they’re mistaken. Or just because they’re damned fools.

Lenny is the damnedest of all damned fools, an absolute cad, but as played by Grodin he’s surprisingly not detestable. He’s just another idiot, screwing up everything but thinking he’s found the meaning of life, and she’s blonde.

Shepherd is terrific too, balanced on a razor’s edge between sexy, innocent, and femme fatale. Eddie Albert (from Green Acres) does his best work ever, playing Shepherd’s suspicious and eventually furious father. But still, what sticks mostly in my mind is Berlin, who’s simply perfect playing a woman who’s simply human.

It’s a lighthearted but harsh comedy, innocent yet cynical, and in all ways the opposite of a romance, with an ending that Lenny deserves.

Written by Neil Simon, and directed by Elaine May, this is a small masterpiece. 

Verdict: BIG YES. 

♦ ♦ ♦

• Why Robert Wise’s The Haunting continues to deliver the goods to modern audiences 

• Elaine May is the greatest director you’ve never heard of 

8/23/2024

  • • • Coming attractions • • •   

Heartland (1979)
Heathers (1989)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Heaven Knows What (2014)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises

— — —
Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter ‘I’.
Just add a comment, below.
— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome,but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

Neverending Film Festival

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