THE NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#190  [archive]
Today you get three movies, all recommended: a serious piece of art (Scarecrow), an icky slice of schlock (Street Trash), and an enjoyable but forgettable Hollywood product (The Three Musketeers).— — —
Scarecrow (1973)
Streaming free
Max (Gene Hackman) and Francis (Al Pacino) play a couple of drifters with dreams, bumming their way across the country.

Max wants to run a car wash in Pittsburgh, and he’s given it a lot of thought and he’s still thinking it over. Francis has a positive outlook and he’s a clown at heart, and he carries a gift-wrapped package everywhere, making his way toward Detroit to give the gift to his child that he’s never seen.The film is an engrossing, thoughtful mini-series of Max and Francis’s adventures, and it gathers serious heft as it goes. They’re on their way to their destinations, but instead they find their destiny.Is Hackman a good actor? Hard to say — in his better-known roles, he’s always playing basically the same guy. He’s that guy here, too — tough, taciturn, smart, but he wants you to leave him alone. He’s great at playing that guy, but did he ever play anyone who wasn’t that guy? The blind priest in Young Frankenstein, I guess.
Pacino is more a mystery. You might think he’s dumb but he’s only quiet, and funny when he wants to be, but sad underneath. None of latter-day Pacino’s overacting is on display.He and Hackman make a nice pair, in this dramatic buddy movie which I’d somehow never heard of. It deserves to be better-known and more widely-seen, as part of the great 1970s movie renaissance.Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦Street Trash (1987)
Streaming free

This is a plotless and pointless but very enjoyable grossout, wherein a gaggle of homeless drunks and bums swig toxic blue junk from a bottle. It makes them even stranger and sometimes deader than they already were, which was pretty strange and dead already.
There’s something about Troma’s intentionally-bad moviemaking that usually bores me, but the good news is, this ain’t from Troma. It’s of that genre, certainly gruesome and occasionally offensive, but it strikes almost exactly the right tone of in-your-face revulsion.There are several masterpiece moments, but the best bit is an extended, bravado shoplifting scene, where a bum drops groceries into all his pockets and down his pants, and then feigns offense when he’s suspected of what we’ve all seen him do.It has several rape-adjacent jokes, sorry. Nothing’s on-screen, but it’s implied. There’s also a penis forcibly removed and tossed around like a game of hot-potato, and anyway the title is Street Trash, so none of it is served with champagne.
Bad taste, bad people, bad stuff in the bottle, and an entire bad society walks the streets at night. It’s a guaranteed happy time all the way through. Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦The Three Musketeers (1973)

D’Artagnan wants to be a musketeer, and leaving home his father’s fine advice is to get into as many duels as possible, to gain a reputation. Such duels were usually to the death, so this seems odd advice from dear old dad.This is a somewhat bawdy, frequently funny, never quite full of itself adaptation of the book, with young Michael York dashing as D’Artagnan, surrounded by an all-star Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). Christopher Lee and Charlton Heston seem to be enjoying themselves too.Surprisingly, Oliver Reed is had not yet fully achieved his trademarked ‘fat slob’ movie persona, so he’s barely even annoying.
This was one of the monthly mainstream movies I watch with the family, and it’s better than most. I liked the beginning, fell asleep in the middle, and enjoyed the somewhat rousing end.The swash has been buckled, but why are they called musketeers? There’s much, much more swordplay than musket firings.Verdict: YES.♦ ♦ ♦ • Coming attractions •China 9, Liberty 37 (1978) The Cook (1918)Doctor Who (second season, 2006)The Scarecrow (1920)Stalker (1979) The YouTube Effect (2022) … plus occasional schlock and surprises     • And then •A Better Tomorrow (1996)A Night in Casablanca (1946) Atomic Cafe (1982) The Bat People (1974) The Beatles: Get Back (2021) Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)Brainwaves (1983) The Card Counter (2021) Cellular (2004)  The Celluloid Closet (1996)The Day My Parents Became Cool (2009) The Decline of Western Civilization (1980) Downsizing (2017) The Exterminating Angel (1964)Fog Over Frisco (1934) Frankenhooker (1990) The General (1926) The Green Girl (2014) God Bless America (2011) Hiroshima (1953)Hobo (1992) Invader (1991) Jesus of Montreal (1989)John Wick (2014)The Killing of America (1981)  Lady in the Van (2015)The Last Case of August T Harrison (2015) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)  Line of Duty (debut episode; 2012)Love Happy (1950)The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1941)The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)The Man with Nine Lives (1940)The Manhattan Project (1996) Motel (1989)The Naked City (1948)The Night Strangler (1973)Nightmare Alley (1947)9 to 5 (1980) Not Wanted (1949)Nothing But a Man (1964) Phone Booth (2002)Poison (1990)Popeye (1980)Reflections of Evil (2002)Ride in the Whirlwind (1966) Risky Business (1983)The Rockford Files (debut episode; 1974)Romper Stomper (1992)Room Service (1938) Same Kind of Different as Me (2017) Saved! (2004) The Scarecrow (1920) Scarecrow (1973)Scared to Death (1947) Secret Weapons (1985) Smothered (2002)The Soloist (2009) Sons of the Desert (1933)Special Bulletin (1983) Squirm (1976) Stephen Fry in America (2008)Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)The Man Who Thought Life (1969)The Train (1964)Truck Turner (1974)The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time (1981)Tank Girl (1995)Taoism Drunkard (1981) The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) Who Farted? (2019) Who’s That Girl? (1987) Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) You Can’t Take It With You (1938) 10/8/2023   
There
are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign
or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of
making them — that if you only watch whatever’s on Netflix or playing at
the twenty-plex, you’re missing out.To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • CultCinema Classics • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Films for Action • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Kino Lorber • Korean Classic Film • Christopher R Mihm • Mosfilm • Mubi • National Film Board of Canada • New Yorker Screening Room • Damon Packard • Mark Pirro • PizzaFlix • PopcornFlix • Public Domain Movies • RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • Timeless Classic Movies • VoleFlix • WatchDocumentaries • or your local library. Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.