Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007)
Ivan the Terrible (1944)
Ivan the Terrible Part II (1946/1958)
Ivanhoe (1952)
Ivid Aver (2024)
Five Star Final (1931)

Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007)

Whoops, this is not the bikini exploitation I’d expected from the title. It’s a lesbo romance, slathered in punk and agitprop.

Anna is a recently-heartbroken lesbian who works at a boob-job clinic, but has no enthusiasm for the job, and less for being a bridesmaid in her sister’s wedding. She’s the ideal candidate to be drafted into the CIA (Clits In Action), a gang of fem lib radicals vandalizing the city with feminist graffiti — “A woman is more than her parts!”

Here a fact of Hollywood: There’s big bucks funding and top-notch talent on both sides of the camera if you’re making a movie that has nothing to say, but otherwise you’ll be scraping for nickels, dimes, and volunteers. This film scraped, but it’s invigorating, different, fresh, and the twist at the end wasn’t what I’d expected.

The acting is spotty, the story implausible and sketched more than told, but there’s rare heart and anger here, and the CIA’s politics are exactly right (a few words I never thought I’d type). I laughed and cheered and sometimes cringed, but Itty Bitty Titty Committee gets a thumbs up from me.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ivan the Terrible (1944)

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin is one of the great films, period. Almost twenty years after making that epic, Eisenstein wrote and directed this.

Ivan the Terrible is visually beautiful, probably filmed on location in castles and such. It has terrific use of shadows, and watching the noir work behind the actors is sometimes (alas, often) more fun than watching the actors. It’s got your fabled cast of thousands, and it’s an eye-popper, mos def, but the story either makes no sense or I’m too dense (maybe both).

It opens with a 16th-century ceremony where everyone’s wearing bejeweled headpieces and the men have beards to their navels. People are saying “Long live the Tsar,” over and over, and then some baritone sings “Long Live the Tsar” as sneering flunkies pour two buckets of worship-trinkets over the newly crowned Tsar’s head. These costumes, sets, even the trinkets and possibly the song are authentic, but they’re also ridiculous, especially to someone not raised on Russian history.

The Tsar, Ivan Vasilievich, says he’ll unite Russia, but not through love and brotherhood. He’ll set up a permanent army and conquer the whole country with great brutality, and have anyone perceived as his enemy killed. Hard to root for that, but in this movie you’re supposed to. Also seems strange for the Soviet Union to bankroll a film idolizing the guy, but apparently he was a hero to Stalin.

It’s not a silent movie, but thinks it is, so it’s stuffed with overacting, often with crazy poses and eye movements. The schemers and backstabbers wear exaggerated schemer/backstabber faces at every moment in every scene they’re in.

The guy playing Ivan delivers a performance so stilted you can almost hear the stage directions — look into the distance, yeah, now hold your hand over your heart. OK, now hold that pose… keep holding… keep holding…

Ivan has a 15-minute death scene, wherein he melodramatically seems to die, then rises for a few more hokey lines, dies again, rises and babbles some more, then finally dies with a full body flop across his deathbed … only to emerge miraculously cured five minutes later.

Sorry, I seem to be going on and on. One more paragraph, and I’ll shut up.

Virtually every line of dialogue is either spoken by the Tsar, to the Tsar, or about the Tsar, but the Tsar is so one-dimensional and unrelenting evil and boring, it’s all just a gloriously photographed Soviet yawn.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ivan the Terrible Part II: The Boyars Conspiracy (1946/1958)

I will admit before watching this that, after sitting through the first movie, I am predisposed to dislike the sequel. But ol’ Sergei might’ve had something cooking here — Stalin thought Part II was criticizing him by showing how terrible Ivan really was, so this flick was blockaded until after Stalin’s death. Maybe it’ll be better? Let’s find out…

Nah, it’s more of the same. It’s a little lighter in tone, which makes it 96% pompous instead of 99%, and Stalin was right — Part II makes it more obvious that Ivan was terrible. But it’s the same overacting and tedious, meandering storytelling. Bit of a shocker when the film briefly bursts into color, but it never bursts into interesting.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ivanhoe (1952)

Based on a novel of some renown by Sir Walter Scott, here’s an adventure of Normans vs Saxons, starring Robert & Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Fontaine.

Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe goes looking for the vanished King Richard the Lionhearted, and finds he’s being held prisoner. The ransom is 150,000 whatevers, which is more than anyone can afford without help from a wealthy Jewish financier. Ms Taylor is the financier’s daughter, and being Jewish she’s of course charged with witchcraft.

There’s ample feel-good dialogue about accepting Jews as genuine English, but nary a word about Normans accepting Saxons or Saxons Normans. Those clans hate each other without reason, like Hatfields and McCoys. Also, the preaching of religious tolerance seems oddly at odds with the film’s casual mention that Ivanhoe has recently returned from battles of the Crusades in the Middle East.

Guy Rolfe is delightfully despicable as the vile Prince John, Emlyn Williams is kinda fun as a court jester & slave freed by Ivanhoe, and George Sanders announces his intent to rape Elizabeth Taylor with a flowery speech.

You may safely expect jousting, arrow warfare, and surprisingly few sword fights. All women must be addressed as “M’lady.” Robin Hood and his merry men are part of the plot, but seldom seen.

The rousing but reverential music repeatedly reminded me of the theme from Ben-Hur. Click click, and yup, both films were scored by Miklós Rózsa, and if you can wring two paychecks out of the same work, why not?

All in all, the movie is starchy but certainly enjoyable.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Ivid Aver (2024)

From Azerbaijan, this is more foreign than most foreign films. It’s a 9-minute short, dramatizing a famous (to Azerbaijanis) Azerbaijani folk song about a young man sent to battle, and his much younger brother who wants to accompany him.

A preamble recommends turning on subtitles, because the dialogue has been dubbed into English but the song hasn’t.

The swordfight is filmed too choppy, and the dubbing was obviously recorded in a studio, at odds with the naturalistic setting and sounds of the rest of the film. But it’s a trippy seven minutes, followed by two minutes of credits.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Five Star Final (1931)

Edward G Robinson stars as Randall, editor of an old-style scandal-sheet newspaper, constantly looking for salacious news that’ll sell papers.

Running short on horrid headlines, he orders a retrospective on a killing from twenty years earlier, in which a woman was found not guilty in her baby-daddy’s death. She’s gone on to live a respectable life, without telling her daughter about her sordid past, so the Gazette‘s fresh headlines threaten to ruin her life and family. Randall barely cares, but his barely is more than anyone else on the paper’s staff.

Some of the dialogue seems stale a century later, the scenes at the newspaper’s switchboard are accidentally hilarious, and the movie’s message gets mighty loud, but also — wow. This is a movie for grown-ups, and it’s pre-code, so a happy ending is not guaranteed.

In his last role before Frankenstein made him a star, Boris Karloff is a wonder of treachery as “Reverend” T. Vernon Isopod, so called because he flunked out of divinity school before becoming an extremely un-divine reporter.

Directed by Mervyn Le Roy, and Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, this flick lost to Grand Hotel. Haven’t seen it in ages, but my recollection says Five Star Final is better than Grand Hotel.

Verdict: YES.

12/8/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

If you can’t find a movie I’ve mentioned, drop me a note and I’ll hook you up.
         

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