90 Movies in 90 Days: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Release Date: March 31, 1939
Director: Sidney Lanfield
Production Company: 20th Century Fox
Summary/Review:

Based on the most famous of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, this is the first of 14 movies starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. John Watson. This is also the first of this film series I’ve ever watched.  I grew up in the time when Jeremy Brett and was assured that his performance was more authentic than the old Rathbone movies.  But this film actually is fairly true to the novel, only leaving out a few details here and there.  I enjoyed Rathbone and Watson’s performances as well as Richard Greene as Sir Henry Baskerville, and the mood and atmosphere of the moors is well done.  There’s also an attack by the titular hound that seems quite intense for 1939.

Rating: ***

90 Movies in 90 Days: What Did Jack Do? (2017)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: What Did Jack Do?
Release Date: November 8, 2017
Director: David Lynch
Production Company: Absurda
Summary/Review:

A detective (David Lynch) interrogates Jack (a Capuchin monkey named Jack Cruz, but voiced by Lynch) about his possible involvement in a murder.  For 20 minutes, man and monkey exchange film noir cliches, and there’s even a musical number, before the stunning denouement.  It’s delightfully absurd.

Rating: ***

90 Movies in 90 Days: Angel’s Egg (1985)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: Angel’s Egg
Release Date: December 22, 1985
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Production Company:  Tokuma Shoten Studio Deen
Summary/Review:

In this beautifully animated and deliberately paced film, a girl (Mako Hyōdō) wanders an desolate city while protecting a large egg. The city seems occupied by people frozen in time who only come alive to hunt shadowy fish that float through the sky.  The only other person in the film who feels “real” instead of a ghost is a young man (Jinpachi Nezu), possibly a soldier, who pursues the girl to learn about the egg.  With very little dialogue and allusions to myths and religious beliefs, this film is open to many interpretations.  It definitely fits in the the category of fantasies with gorgeous imagery that make you say “huh?” alongside Fantastic Planet and Son of White Mare.

Rating: ****

 

 

90 Movies in 90 Days: I Walked With A Zombie (1943)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: I Walked With A Zombie
Release Date: April 21, 1943
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Production Company: RKO Radio Pictures
Summary/Review:

This is an early zombie movie based on the original folklore of the Caribbean of people mindlessly reanimated by Voodou.  Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is hired as a nurse to travel to the island of St. Sebastian to care for the catatonic Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon).  She lives on the estate of Jessica’s cynical husband Paul Holland (Tom Conway) and his more personable but alcoholic step-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison). Betsy falls in love with Paul and grows determined to bring Jessica back for him, even using Vodou ritual.  As a film, director Tourneur does a great job establishing atmosphere and dread and surprisingly reminds me a bit of Rebecca.  For a 1940s Hollywood film dealing with the legacies of slavery in the Caribbean it expectedly lacks the cultural sensitivity although I feel the movie’s point of view is more sympathetic to the Black people on the island than the white characters in the film.

Rating: ***

90 Movies in 90 Days: Princes and Princesses (2000)

Every day until March 31, 2024 I will be watching and reviewing a movie that is 90 minutes or less.

Title: Princes and Princesses
Release Date: January 26, 2000
Director: Michel Ocelot
Production Company:  La Fabrique | Les Armateurs | Salud Productions | Studio O
Summary/Review:

An anthology of animated adaptations of fairy tale stories from different places and times, originally aired as part of the French television series Ciné si. The silhouette animation style is reminiscent of Lotte Reiniger and is made by the same director as Kirikou and the Sorceress. The conceit here is that three filmmakers, voiced by Arlette Mirapeu, Philippe Cheytion, and Yves Barsacq, are creating movies with the help of a magic robot and then they “act” in them.  There are six stories in all plus the framing narrative.

The stories range from Ancient Egypt, Japan, and into the future as well as the more typical fantasy settings inspired by Medieval Europe.  The animations are beautifully realized.   I like the “Fractured Fairy Tales” type of humor of the films as well, particularly a dragon that poops cannonballs, or the final story in which each time a Princess and Prince kiss they turn one another into another animal.  Definitely a fun way to spend an hour if you’re looking for something different.

Rating: ****

 

Book Review: The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Around the World for a Good Book selection for Cayman Islands

Author: Sara Collins
Title: The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Narrator: Sara Collins and Roy McMilan
Publication Info: HarperAudio, 2019
Summary/Review:

The Confessions of Frannie Langton takes on two 19th-century writing conventions, the gothic novel and the slave narrative, and deconstructs them both. The narrator is Frannie Langton, a black woman in London accused of the double murder of her master George Benham and his French wife Marguerite.  Frannie claims to be unable to remember the murder and instead writes to her lawyer the story of her life.

Frannie was born into slavery in Jamaica and served a man named Langton who considered himself a scientist dedicated to proving the inferiority of Black people.  When Langton brings Frannie to England she ostensibly becomes a free person, but he “gifts” her to Benham, another dubious scientist, and essentially remains a captive.  But Franny and Marguerite form a romantic connection which lends Franny both new privileges and greater risks.

Sara Collins performed thorough historical research to support the details of this story and it shows.  It’s a historical novel but one that reflects on the dark side of humanity, as well as love and justice (or the lack thereof).  It’s a novel designed to disturb and it does it well.

Recommended books:

• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M. T. Anderson
• Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge
• She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Author: Tamsyn Muir
Title: Gideon the Ninth
Narrator: Moira Quirk
Publication Info: Recorded Books, Inc., 2019
Summary/Review:

Gideon the Ninth is a science fiction/fantasy/gothic/horror/mystery/humor/LGBTQ/adventure story set in a solar system with nine planets, each hosting a school of necromancy.  The title character eighteen year-old Gideon Nav, a “cavalier” assigned to guard the necromancer of the Ninth House Harrowhark “Harrow” Nonagesimus when she is invited to participate in a series of trials called for by the godlike Emperor.  Gideon and Harrow share a lifelong mutual hatred, but grow closer over the course of the novel they grow close as they are forced to work together.  When people mysteriously start to die they need to figure out what is going on before all the Houses are killed.

I confess that I was confused by the whole worldbuilding aspect of this story, although I chalk it up to reader error.  While I didn’t like this enough to want to continue with the Locked Tomb series, it is definitely well-written and creative, and the caustic Gideon is nevertheless a hilarious and endearing character.

Recommended books:

• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
• The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang
• Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Rating: ***

50 Years, 50 Movies (1974): Murder on the Orient Express

I turned 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life.  The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously. 

1974

Top Grossing Movies of 1974:

1. The Towering Inferno
2. Blazing Saddles
3. Young Frankenstein
4. Earthquake
5. The Trial of Billy Jack

Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 1974:

• The Godfather, Part II
• Chinatown
• The Conversation
• Lenny
• The Towering Inferno

Other Movies I’ve Reviewed from 1974: none, somehow

Title: Murder on the Orient Express
Release Date: 21 November 1974
Director: Sidney Lumet
Production Company:
Summary/Review:

There’s nothing quite like the 1970s all-star ensemble cast murder mystery movie, and this is a fun one.  Famous detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) travels from Istanbul to London the Orient Express, and while the train is caught in a snowdrift in Yugoslavia, the man in the next cabin, Mr. Ratchett (Richard Widmark) is murdered.  Poirot begins an inquiry, swiftly learning that the victim was actually the man behind kidnapping and murdering a child in Long Island five years earlier (an obvious parallel to the Lindbergh baby case).  This gives a lot of people a motive to kill him, but it’s up to Poirot to determine which one.

I saw the conclusion of this movie on TV when I was young, but knowing whodunit didn’t spoil the movie for me. Instead it was fun seeing Poirot figure out “howcatchem” like in a “Columbo” episode.  The downside of having so many great actors in the same movie is that they each only get a little bit of screen time.  Nevertheless I think Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Rachel Roberts stand out for their performances.  I also likes the style of this movie which captures the glamor of the golden age of rail travel.

Rating: ****

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Movie Review: They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

Title: They Cloned Tyrone
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Director: Juel Taylor
Production Company: MACRO Media
Summary/Review:

Along the lines of Get Out and Sorry to Bother You, this comedy/mystery/science fiction dystopia story uses the tropes of genre movies to explore institutional racism.  Fontaine (John Boyega), Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), and Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) are an unlikely trio who discover that their poor Black neighborhood The Glen is subject to a government experiment in cloning and mind control.

Especially early on, this movie feels set in a heightened, satirical version of Hollywood racial caricatures of Black people, especially from 1970s Blaxploitation films.  Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles begin this movie as a drug dealer, sex worker, and pimp but gradually grow out of the stereotypes as they demonstrate their intelligence and resourcefulness.  I won’t spoil anything, but the plot of this movie is bonkers and the dialogue is often quite strange as well.  Foxx especially gets a lot of hilarious non-sequiturs.  This is a movie that can go from funny to disturbing and back again swiftly, but it is always very, very weird.

Rating: ***

50 Years 50 Movies (1973): The Long Goodbye

I will turn 50 in THREE DAYS!!!!, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life.  The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously. 

1973

Top Grossing Movies of 1973:

1. The Exorcist
2. The Sting
3. American Graffiti
4. Papillon
5. The Way We Were

Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 1973:

• The Sting
• American Graffiti
• Cries and Whispers
• The Exorcist
• A Touch of Class

Other Movies I’ve Reviewed of 1973:

• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
• Amarcord
• Don’t Look Now
• Enter the Dragon
• Fantastic Planet
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle
• Ganja & Hess
• The Harder They Come
• Robin Hood
• The Spirit of the Beehive
• Theatre of Blood
• Wattstax

Title: The Long Goodbye
Release Date: March 7, 1973
Director: Robert Altman
Production Company: Lion’s Gate Films
Summary/Review:

Raymond Chandler’s gumshoe novel is loosely adapted to fit the times of New Age hedonism in the sunny Southern California of the 1970s.  It’s a bit of a shaggy dog story, or more accurately, a runaway cat story. Things take a turn for the worse when private detective Phillip Marlowe’s (Eliot Gould) cat wakes him in the middle of the night to be fed.  Then Marlowe’s friend Terry Lennox (baseball player Jim Bouton) appears out of the blue requesting a ride to the Mexican border.  After helping Terry out, Marlowe is arrested as a possible accessory when Terry and his wife are both found dead in an apparent murder/suicide.  Released from jail, Marlowe is hired by Eileen Wade to find her eccentric, alcoholic husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), which proves pretty easy.

And that’s just the first 25 minutes.  Somehow in the big city of Los Angeles, Marlowe finds that everyone is connected – the Lennoxes, the Wades, and even the brutal gangster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) who is trying to shake him down for stolen money.  It can’t be just a coincidence.  The narrative rambles around like no other film I’ve seen before (although it had to be an influence on The Big Lebowski), but I found myself sucked into to every tangent.

This is a movie that’s great for the details, such as:

• the way Marlowe can light a match on anything
• Marlowe’s apartment fantastically set into a hillside with cantilevered balconies (filmed at an actual residential building called High Tower Court)
• how all the music in the film is different arrangements of the same song
• instead of the stentorian narration of classic film noir, Marlowe mumbles to himself
• everything to do with the cat

Rating: ****

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