Last night, a double find: remember director Hugo Haas from a couple years ago? I think we discovered him in the first year of Covid. His movies evolve like fables out of their characters' unusual circumstances. Well, tonight we not only found an unseen Hugo Haas movie, but it stars John Agar! How awesome is that? Man, every time we think we've seen the last of his movies, months can go by, or even a year, and we find another one. This time, he's a death row inmate awaiting execution, so he gets to really turn on the acting chops. If you recall, we once thought he had none, that his only gears were smug and smugger. Then we saw him in something more serious (i.e a non-Monster Brain Sci-Fi) and found out that he did have talent. And in "Hold Back Tomorrow"(1955), he gets to show it off.
The movie opens with a woman trying to drown herself in the river of an unnamed city. To her dismay, a bystander pulls her out. "Dora" (Cleo Moore) is a prostitute down on her luck. "They won't let you live and they won't let you die," she laments, then gives up for the night to head back to wherever she calls home. In an alcove, she observes two women reading a newspaper. The headline screams the upcoming execution of "Joe Cardos" (Agar), a notorious strangler. "He's a monster, a beast!" say the women.
Inside his cell, he seems just that, barking at the guards on his last night of life. When the warden asks him if he'd like a last meal, "Anything you want, Joe," he responds by yelling "Just leave me alone!" Every reply is equally confrontational. "How about a game of cards, or a visit with the chaplain?" "No! are you deaf?" "Your sister would like to see you." "Tell her it's too late. Now leave me alone!" He couldn't be nastier, lashing out even about the coffee the warden's wife has kindly brewed to keep him awake: "This stuff tastes awful! What're you trying to do, poison me before they hang me?"
Joe is angry at the world, but really at himself. When the warden and guards stop trying to mollify him, he changes his tune because he wants attention. "Hey warden? You said I could have anything I want on my last night? How about a girl? Maybe some music? I wanna have a party, some fun."
Because this is a Hugo Haas movie, what would be impossible and illegal (a random girl in a murderer's cell) is instead brought to bear. The warden has two detectives scour the local bars and dance halls looking for a floozy who'll spend the night with Joe. Not sexually of course, just as company. Because the prologue has already been set up, we know Dora is the girl who'll take the job. All the other local good-time girls are scared because Joe is a convicted killer. Dora was gonna kill herself beforehand, so she has nothing to lose. "At least I'll have the money for my funeral" she says of the pay offered by the warden.
The rest of the 77 minute movie is a play, set in Joe's 300-year-old stone basement cell. He tries at first to intimidate Dora, and when that doesn't work, he tries humiliation. "I asked for someone fun! You're about as exciting as a dead fish." Dora is still soaking wet from her jump in the river. She's depressed, and "no fun," but she tries to draw Joe out, into reasonably friendly conversation, and thereby earn her pay. He continues to shout her down, as he does with everyone. Joe can twist any utterance into an argument, but his tactic doesn't work on Dora. She's already given up on life and not only out-toughs Joe, but because she's more sophisticated than he is (she reads poetry), she psychoanalyses him also, slowly driving him to the point where he's going to be forced reveal his wounded inner child. Dora confesses her own vulnerabilities: "You know, Joe, all my life I've never been able to smile. Even when I was little."
In return, he brags about never having cried, "Not even when my Dad beat me black and blue. I've never cried in my entire life!"
Dora starts to break him down after this, using different emotional appeals to crack his facade. This one-on-one is slow in places, but never less than gripping, and as his hour of execution nears, Joe finally asks to see the prison chaplain, whom he'd banished earlier. Suddenly, he wants to marry Dora before he dies. He even agrees to see his sister. In a complete reversal of attitude, Joe now hopes for redemption. John Agar demonstrates real pathos in this segment, helped along by the emotive Cleo Moore (the muse of Hugo Haas) in two-shots and close-ups. The ending is very Christian and mystic. Two Big Thumbs Up with a high recommendation. The picture is razor sharp. ////
Now then, I could tell you about "Asteroid City", which I went to see this past weekend at Laemmle Encino with my sister, but I think the less said, the better. My initial review, when Vickie asked me what I thought, was: "I liked the art direction", but even all those candy-coated colors got old after awhile. I think we are in The Age of Aspergers, where billionaires and movie directors are "on the spectrum". Moviewise, that means scripts with literally millions of words of dialogue, spoken as fast as possible by actors wearing blank or ironic expressions, with all those words written to give the impression that the writer/director is a "genius", but leaving instead the certainty that he's an ADD child trapped in an adult's body, saying "Look at me, Mom and Dad! Aren't I precious?"
Wes Anderson is that kid; he's obnoxious, and he's now strongly competing with Terry Gilliam and David Cronenberg for The Worst Director of All Time. I got suckered in by the title. I thought, 'Asteroid City', cool. It'll be an Atomic Age movie." But it isn't. Oh, he's got that cute desert set (the novelty of which wears off). But then he's got Jason Schwartzman with beard and pipe, staring into the camera, mumbling nothing of any consequence, and it gets worse from there. The pages upon upon pages of dialogue is non-sequitorial and flat-spoken; at best, it's like a line-reading rehearsal, and it's deliberately done that way to test your patience and "see if you're cool", i.e. Woke and Millennial.
Then you have the Multi-Culti Formula, where you have to have the Korean character say something confrontational, the Indian character supplicant and pleading, the White People dispassionate and bored, the Jewish people internalized, confused, bratty, and mathematically brilliant. Man, I can't stand the left-wing, pretentious art crowd that controls independent cinema. Their filmmakers are profoundly untalented, not that the Right would be any better, but the Right is not into filmmaking (or isn't given the chance), and the "Left" (whatever the hell that means) has allowed the "special needs kids" to take over, Wes Anderson being the prime example. Hey! Remember when everyone thought Tim Burton was weird? He was an art director cum Director who hit it big with "Beelejuice". He made Johhny Depp famous with "Edward Scissorhands". He was okay, and made some watchable films, but was essentially an Art Guy from CalArts who "done grad-gee-ated" to the director's chair, even though he's not a real director, hence his stories aren't all that memorable. What we remember instead are his visuals.
But he's light years beyond Wes Anderson in talent. Wes Anderson is a precious, "aren't I a genius" guy who wrote a script that says nothing, and doesn't tell the audience anything resembling story, while expending a million words. Don't believe me? Go sit through "Asteroid City" for yourself, but don't say I didn't warn you.
The thing is, if you're in lockstep with the current cinematic art crowd, then you'll be expected to guffaw in places where no guffaw (or even a chuckle) would be warranted. You'll also be expected to rave when the movie is over, just as you are expected to automatically rave about any movie by the guy who made "Nope", who is also in the running for the top five worst directors ever. You will be expected to do these things because you are In Lock Step (if you are).
But in your heart, you'll know the movie was not only terrible, but not even a real movie at all, or even a genuinely weird one, ala David Lynch. What you just saw was a multi-million dollar act of Entitled Self-Indulgence, from a guy with nothing to say.
The only thing I got from "Asteroid City" was that The Alien stole the asteroid. And the computer-generated alien, who says nothing, was supposedly played by Jeff Goldblum, which I guess was an inside joke of some kind.
You could make a worse movie than Asteroid City ("Cosmopolis" comes to mind), but you'd have to get up early, work out, and eat your Wheaties. because you are competing with an Aspergers guy, whose mental energy you can't hope to match. Mental energy, however, doesn't add up to genius, and very often it doesn't add up to anything except energy. I dare you to sit through this movie. Good luck, and God Bless. I also re-watched "The Leech Woman" that night, which we reviewed a while back, and as bad as it is, it's Citizen Kane compared to Asteroid City. And I can't stand Scarlett Johansson, either. ////
That's all I know for the moment. My blogging music is "Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into" by Gilgamesh, my late night is Handel's Rodrigo Opera. I wish you a Happy 4th of July and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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