365 Movies in 365 Days: Chess Fever (1925)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Chess Fever
Release Date: December 21, 1925
Director: Nikolai Shpikovsky
Production Company: Mezhrabpom-Russ
Main Cast:

  • José Raúl Capablanca – the World Champion
  • Vladimir Fogel – the hero
  • Anna Zemtsova – the heroine
  • Natalya Glan
  • Zakhar Darevsky
  • Boris Barnet
  • Frank Marshall – himself (cameo)
  • Richard Réti – himself (cameo)
  • Carlos Torre Repetto – himself (cameo)
  • Frederick Yates – himself (cameo)
  • Ernst Grünfeld – himself (cameo)
  • Mikhail Zharov – house painter
  • Anatoly Ktorov – tram passenger
  • Yakov Protazanov – chemist
  • Yuli Raizman – chemist’s assistant
  • Ivan Koval-Samborsky – policeman
  • Konstantin Eggert – chess shop owner
  • Fedor Ozep – game spectator (uncredited)
  • Sergei Komarov – grandfather

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

With an international chess tournament in progress, a young man becomes completely obsessed with the game. His fiancée has no interest in it, and becomes frustrated and depressed by his neglect of her, but wherever she goes she finds that she cannot escape chess. On the brink of giving up, she meets the world champion, Capablanca himself, with interesting results.

My Thoughts:

In this Soviet comedy short, a young man’s obsession with chess becomes a deal breaker for his fiancée.  But as she finds the whole city consumed with playing chess, she starts to go mad!  This seems like a characteristically Russian problem to have.  For a slender premise, there are a lot of great gags and its really quite humorous.  Extra credit for featuring many, many kittens.

Rating: ***1/2

365 Movies in 365 Days: Entr’acte (1924)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Entr’acte
Release Date: December 4, 1924
Director: René Clair
Production Company: Société Nouvelle des Acacias
Main Cast:

  • Jean Börlin
  • Inger Frïis
  • Marcel Duchamp
  • Man Ray
  • Francis Picabia
  • Erik Satie

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair’s first and most ‘dada’ film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes. We witness a rooftop chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, a hearse pulled by a camel (and chased by its pallbearers) and a dizzying roller coaster finale. A film of contradictions and agreements.

My Thoughts:

This clever montage involving many conceptual artists of the 1920s brings together scenes of everyday life and sequences of absurdity.  The longest of these involves a funeral procession in which the mourners are forced to run in silly ways and the deceased is very much alive.  This feels like a bridge between the trick films of Georges Méliès and Luis Buñuel.

Rating: ****

365 Movies in 365 Days: Never Weaken (1921)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Never Weaken
Release Date: October 22, 1921
Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Production Company: Rolin Film Company
Main Cast:

  • Harold Lloyd as The Boy
  • Mildred Davis as The Girl
  • Roy Brooks as The Other Man
  • Mark Jones as The Acrobat
  • Charles Stevenson as The Police Force
  • William Gillespie as Dr. Frank Gary, The Girl’s employer
  • George Rowe as Crossed-Eyed Accident Victim

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Our hero is infatuated with a girl in the next office. In order to drum up business for her boss, an osteopath, he gets an actor friend to pretend injuries that the doctor “cures”, thereby building a reputation. When he hears that his girl is marrying another, he decides to commit suicide and spends the bulk of the film in thrilling, failed attempts.

My Thoughts:

This is a two-part movie.  In the first Harold Lloyd drums up business for an osteopath who employs the girl he’s wooing.  In the second, he mistakenly believes she’s engaged to someone else and tries to kill himself in dramatic ways.  I liked the first part better than the second.  The whole thing feels like a warm-up for Safety Last.

Rating: ***

365 Movies in 365 Days: One Week (1920)

~ Liam ~ 1 Comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: One Week
Release Date: September 1, 1920
Director: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
Production Company: Metro Pictures
Main Cast:

  • Buster Keaton as the groom
  • Sybil Seely as the bride
  • Joe Roberts as piano mover

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

Newlyweds receive a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift—and the house can, supposedly, be built in “one week”. A rejected suitor secretly re-numbers packing crates, and the husband struggles to assemble the house according to this new ‘arrangement’ of its parts.

My Thoughts:

Buster Keaton and his gorgeous bride must construct their new “kit home.” Through a combination of sabotage by the bride’s would-be suitor and general incompetence they essentially build a fun house leading to a number of gags and stunts.  It’s very funny with the fast-paced sequencing of gags. I particularly liked the mover carrying a piano on his shoulder, and the train gag – while I correctly suspected what would happen – was perfectly achieved.

Rating: ****

Album Review: Straight Line Was a Lie by The Beths

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Album: Straight Line Was a Lie
Artist: The Beths
Release Date: August 29, 2025
Label: Anti-
Favorite Tracks:

  • Straight Line Was a Lie
  • Mosquitoes
  • Mother, Pray For Me
  • Take

Thoughts:

I’ve been enjoying The Beths’ music for several years so I’m delighted to have a new album from them.  The New Zealand quartet is known for their power-pop melodies and harmonies that blend all four members’ voices.  This album may be their most consistent yet with a selection of songs on heartbreak and healing.

Rating: ***1/2

 

Related Posts:

Song of the Week: “Pluto is not a planet its a restaurant” by Gelli Haha

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Gelli Haha – “Pluto is not a planet its a restaurant“

KCRW describes Los Angeles vocalist Gelli Haha (stage name for Angel Abaya) as a “sonic acrobat.”  That sounds about the right description of the bouncy, sonicaly-dense sound of “Pluto is not a planet its a restaurant.” The song is featured on Gelli Haha’s debut album Switcheroo.

 

Songs of the Week for 2025

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

  • “Pluto is not a planet its a restaurant” by Gelli Haha

365 Movies in 365 Days: The Drummer of the 8th (1913)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: The Drummer of the 8th
Release Date: May 28, 1913
Director: Jay Hunt
Production Company: Broncho Film Company
Main Cast:

  • Cyril Gardner – Billy Durand
  • Mildred Harris – Mildred Brown
  • Frank Borzage – Jack Durand

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

When the Civil War begins, young Billy runs away from home to enlist in the Northern Army as a drummer; he’s wounded in battle and taken prisoner. He manages to escape and deliver an important message to his commanding officer, but loses his life in the process. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

My Thoughts:

After his older brother enlists in the Union Army, little Billy runs away and joins another regiment under an assumed name.  Billy finds life as a regimental drummer is not what he imagined as he encounters the horror war, gets captured and put in a POW camp, and is even shot by enemy troops.  Cut into Billy’s travails are scenes of his worried family and friends, particularly his mother and the girl next door.  At one point, Billy inadvertently becomes a spy,  but his intelligence is for naught as the insurrectionist general changes his attack plans.  The film is sentimental and melodramatic, and (perhaps inadvertently) an anti-war movie in its grim depiction of the miseries of a child soldier. I haven’t been able to find out the locations where this film was shot, but it looks a whole lot more like Southern California than anywhere on the East Coast, so it may be a very early Hollywood film.

Rating: ***

Movie Review: The Cassandra Cat (1963)

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Title: The Cassandra Cat (aka When the Cat Comes)
Release Date: September 20, 1963
Director: Vojtěch Jasný
Production Company: Barrandov Studios
Main Cast:

  • Jan Werich – Magician / Oliva
  • Emília Vášáryová – Diana
  • Vlastimil Brodský – Teacher Robert
  • Jiří Sovák – School director
  • Vladimír Menšík – School janitor
  • Jiřina Bohdalová – Julie
  • Karel Effa – Janek
  • Vlasta Chramostová – Marjánka
  • Alena Kreuzmannová – Gossip
  • Stella Zázvorková – Ruzena
  • Jaroslav Mareš – Restaurant owner
  • Jana Werichová – Chairman’s wife
  • Ladislav Fialka – Stealer
  • Karel Vrtiska – Miller
  • Václav Babka – Policeman

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

While old Oliva tells a group of children about his life as a sailor and how he met Diana and her cat with sunglasses, a strange circus arrives in town

My Thoughts:

This Czech New Wave classic is very strange and I can’t say I quite “get it” but it does have the titular cat.  And like the children in this film, I love the cat! This cat has to wear sunglasses, because when they’re removed the people in the vicinity have their true colors revealed – red for lovers and good people, yellow for the unfaithful, and purple for liars.  Naturally, the authorities of a village in Bohemia do not want their truths revealed, especially the director of the local school.  But an art teacher named Robert and his students are more willing to embrace imagination.  Robert is also entranced by the cat’s caretaker, an alluring circus performer named Diana.  Chaos reigns in the town as this film explores the foibles of human nature while also serving a political message of standing up to the authoritarian regimes of the Eastern Bloc.  The movie is visually appealing and has a lot of clever moments, although the pacing is odd and the characters are overly-broad.  The movie could also use more of the cat!  Nevertheless it was fun to watch this in a full movie theater, the only movie in Brattle’s “Feline Film Feast” I was able to catch.

Rating: ***

Movie Review: KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

~ Liam ~ 1 Comment

Title: KPop Demon Hunters
Release Date: June 20, 2025
Director: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Production Company: Sony Pictures Animation
Main Cast:

  • Arden Cho – Rumi
    • Ejae – Rumi’s singing voice.
    • Rumi Oak – young Rumi
  • May Hong – Mira
    • Audrey Nuna – Mira’s singing voice.
  • Ji-young Yoo – Zoey
    • Rei Ami – Zoey’s singing voice.
  • Ahn Hyo-seop – Jinu
    • Andrew Choi – Jinu’s singing voice.
  • Yunjin Kim – Celine
    • Lea Salonga – Celine’s singing voice
  • Daniel Dae Kim as Healer Han
  • Ken Jeong as Bobby
  • Lee Byung-hun as Gwi-Ma

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

When K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey aren’t selling out stadiums, they’re using their secret powers to protect their fans from supernatural threats.

My Thoughts:

Huntr/x are a popular KPop girl group trio who also defend the world from demons who capture human souls and feed them to Gwi-Ma. Their music and the joy that it brings to their fans forms a magical protective shield called the Honmoon.  But the girls of Huntr/x also fight the demons in hand-to-hand combat with swords and knives.  Their busy lives have earned them a break, and Mira and Zoey just want to spend time on the couch consuming foods high in carbohydrates.  But the group’s leader Rumi is determined to defeat Gwi-Ma once and for all, because she’s harboring a deep secret that she won’t be able to hide from her friends for much longer.

Enter Jinu, a demon whose soul was harvested centuries earlier, who presents Gwi-Ma with a solution.  He forms an all-demon boy band called Saja Boys to defeat Huntr/x at their own game.  Saja Boys and Huntr/x begin openly competing for the fans’ affections, while secretly fighting over the fate of the world.  And yet Rumi and Jinu begin to make a connection that may offer another way out of their problems.

The movie is inventive and visually impressive in its animation.  I have little knowledge of KPop, but every song on this soundtrack is a banger.  And while this movie may seem silly on the surface, I think it does a great job of explore issues of mental health and being one’s authentic self.  Also, Zoey is my favorite.

Rating:  ***1/2

365 Movies in 365 Days: Onésime, Clockmaker (1912)

~ Liam ~ Leave a comment

This year I’m trying to watch one movie every day of the year, with the provision that the movie be no longer than 36.5 minutes long. I’ll be selecting movies randomly from this list that’s already way too long, but I still welcome suggestions for short films.

Title: Onésime, Clockmaker
Release Date: November 1, 1912
Director: Jean Durand
Production Company: Gaumont
Main Cast:

  • Ernest Bourbon – Onésime
  • Raymond Aimos
  • Berthe Dagmar
  • Alphonse Foucher
  • Édouard Grisollet
  • Gaston Modot

Synopsis (via Letterboxd):

In an effort to secure a promised inheritance, Onésime invents a time machine that speeds up activity on earth, hyper-animates men and machines, and telescopes the human life-cycle.

My Thoughts:

Onésime is a recurring character in a series of French comedy shorts from the 1910s.  In this one he uses his acuity with clocks to speed up time with comic effects. I won’t spoil the gags but it’s a fun eight minutes of early film tricks.

Rating: ***