Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

EDDINGTON: Just ten years ago, this movie set just five years ago would have played like an outlandish satire on the level of SOUTHLAND TALES; now, it seems like something that almost might have really happened. 3.5/5.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

EDDINGTON (2025):
How long will HEREDITARY's (unreasonable, unjustified) line of credit allow Ari Aster to keep making "outlandish", divisive two-and-a-half-hour films that gross only a third-to-half of their budget? I am pessimistic about it but personally I hope the answer is "forever". Madame and I greatly enjoyed the well-acted, beautifully directed (and funny) first 90-to-120 minutes of EDDINGTON, then towards the end increasingly sat silently flummoxed. Honestly it's some credit that Madame (who also hated HEREDITARY and was disgusted and outraged by MIDSOMMAR in spite of then watching it a second time on her own, but loves Pedro Pascal) even made it through EDDINGTON's closing credits. I myself am always embarrassed when I cannot offer a thesis statement about the film I just watched by the time the credits end, and that was the case here!

After having laid awake in bed thinking about it last night, however, I admit I quite admire Aster's chutzpah. EDDINGTON asks a lot of its (regrettably tiny) audience. For one thing, it begins as realism (which, as Rev. Powell indicated above, ain't what it use to be) and very slowly shifts into satire, then in its last twenty-five minutes transforms into allegory or perhaps nightmare/fantasy. EDDINGTON invites sympathy for characters who are horrible people and invites criticism of those who are seemingly decent, raises many questions that it never answers, and introduces an abrupt element of the supernatural (or, perhaps, a character who has become purely symbolic) in its final 5 minutes. Also - perhaps most impressively - Aster provides several of the film's most important pieces of information to the audience precisely once - and if you missed it or you forgot that information two hours later, oh well.

...The guy's got big huevos! I feel bad for EDDINGTON's dreadful performance in theaters, but on the other hand EDDINGTON is in many ways similar yet inferior to the breakout smash hit of the summer, WEAPONS - a film that at least makes some minor narrative concessions to its viewers, still allowing them to chew and process a whole lot of roughage on their own and presumably feel good about it but at least making their digestion manageable and even pleasant.

4/5
...But EDDINGTON is still a much better film and endlessly more worthy of box office success than HEREDITARY!

[Rev. Powell]

yah there is nothing in the song's lyrics to indicate he knew of the case.

Lester, now you should review Lon Chaney Sr.'s 1926 silent gothic classis WHAT'S HE BUILDING IN THERE?

  I always thought that an anthology film of short stories based on TW songs might make a good project. Let Jim Jarmusch direct.

[lester1/2jr]

That does sound like a movie from 1926.

[M.10rda]

A lovely idea and a really natural one, Rev. After DOWN BY LAW and COFFEE AND CIGARETTES and other projects with Waits, it's surprising that never occurred to Jarmusch!

[M.10rda]

STALAG 17 (1953):
This - the first big American POW movie, which surely influenced THE GREAT ESCAPE and directly inspired "Hogan's Heroes" (as proven in a court of law) - was a big hit upon its release, got Oscar noms and a statue for William Holden, and today receives almost unwavering hyperbolic commendations from everyone who's reviewed it on Letterboxd. It's okay, with a few parts that are above average, but it ain't no GRAND ILLUSION... a film Billy Wilder pretty clearly had seen and admired.

If you've ever seen or are aware of "Hogan's Heroes", there's no need for me to provide a plot synopsis, though I'll add that STALAG 17 only attempts to be funny about 3/4ths as much as an episode of "Hogan's Heroes", and succeeds approximately as often as a single episode (which is to say, imho, not too much). There is some legitimate suspense and drama in STALAG 17, though the lame comedy tends to interminably delay the compelling bits. (I suspect STALAG 17 also influenced Altman's M*A*S*H, a later film I also find laboriously unfunny.)

Holden plays a cynical, unpopular angler in the American officer's stockade. (Again, it's easy to identify elements of both Milo Minderbinder and Yossarian from Joseph Heller's outstanding Catch-22, published in 1961.) The best parts of the film are where Holden plays chess (literally and figuratively) with Peter Graves, playing one of the camp's ranking American prisoners. Holden is cagey in a way that's mostly fun to watch, sometimes tiresome (even he didn't think he deserved an Oscar for this performance). Graves, though, is very well-cast - it's hard to think of him as anything other than the smiling, upright AIRPLANE! Captain who likes talking to little boys about gladiator movies, so oddly he works quite well in a serious role as a man with something to hide.

Robert Strauss (star of THE NOAH) was also nominated for an Oscar, more evidence that audiences and the Academy luuurved STALAG 17 and seized any slender excuse to reward it. Strauss' slovenly, sex-crazed funnyman role probably deserves an Oscar nomination just as much as John Belushi deserved an Oscar nom for playing "Bluto" in ANIMAL HOUSE - though honestly Belushi was much funnier - but you can still tell Strauss is a good actor trying his best with thin material. Harvey Lembeck plays the Jerry to Strauss' Dino, and although I'm a lifelong Erich Von Zipper stan, Lembeck's got nothin' to work with here. Neville Brand (much later of EATEN ALIVE fame) does make an impression as a prison tough guy. Some guy named "Don Taylor" is 2nd-billed after Holden and spends most of the movie crouched silently in a water reservoir - ah, the Hollywood system!

Finally, as long as I'm name-dropping "Erich Von"s... it's inescapable that Erich Von Stroheim showed GRAND ILLUSION to Wilder (or reminded Wilder of it) while they were making SUNSETBLVD, and Wilder quickly decided he could do better than Jean Renoir. Maybe Wilder even offered Von Stroheim STALAG 17's scene-stealing role of "Von Schurbach", the "Colonel Klink" character on "Hogan's Heroes" as well as essentially the same role EVS played in GRAND ILLUSION, minus the depth and nuance of Renoir's finely written characters. EVS passed so Wilder cast Otto Preminger, the other German director he had in his rolodex.  Preminger has a couple of very interesting scenes here - Letterboxd users love the boots! - but I'd have been better off just rewatching Renoir's masterpiece.

3/5

Classic Hollywood's favorite funny German Sig Rumaan plays the "Sergeant Schultz" role here - and the character's name is Colonel Schultz....... which probably clinched Billy Wilder's lawsuit!

[Rev. Powell]

Surprised at the lukewarm response to STALAG 17 above. It's one of my favorites. I do like that cynical war-comedy genre (M*A*S*H and--especially--Mike Nichols' CATCH-22 are also big favorites).

ARCO (2025): A boy from the future accidentally time-travels to the past--2075, to be exact--where a girl helps him find his way back to his own time. It's two futures for the price of one in this well-paced French kid's animation with lots of thrilling escapes and touching characters. 3.5/5.