Goodbye, Don Glees!, from GKIDS

Whenever a film invites us to share a group of friends’ last summer together, it is a near certainty we will see the final summer ever for one of them. Roma Kamogawa will definitely have his Big Chill moments, but he does not carry any ex-hippy-boomer baggage, so it is easier to identify with and feel for him in Atsuko Ishizuka’s anime feature Goodbye, Don Glees!, which screens nationwide over the coming days.

Kamogawa’s boyhood friend Toto Mitarai will sort of explain why he named their club of two the “Don Glees,” but it doesn’t really make sense, so don’t worry about it. They had to stick together through middle school, but Mitarai’s domineering father sent him to Tokyo for high school. Now that he is back after freshman year, Mitarai clearly considers Kamogawa a bit of a towny, which makes him embarrassing. He is also more than a little put off by Kamogawa’s new friend.

Shizuku “Drop” Sakuma is somewhat younger than they are, but Kamogawa enjoys his energy and earnestness (whereas Mitarai, not so much). Unfortunately, their private store-bought fireworks ritual goes somewhat awry, especially when their snobby peers point to it, scapegoating them for a freak forest fire. To prove their innocence, the trio sets off on a quest to find an errant drone they hope recorded exculpatory footage.

Nobody does teen angst better than anime filmmakers. This is another good example. Admittedly, Roma and Toto are a bit dense when it comes to picking up on Drop’s fatalistic carpe diem asides, but Ishizuka definitely understands the emotional mindset of young teens. In fact, her story takes on surprising depth and complexity, especially when it reaches the third act (or maybe it is actually a really long epilogue). Regardless, she ties everything together beautifully and even hints at the mildly fantastical.

Behind the Curtain

A pre-teen girl like Yael should never feel compelled to follow current events so closely. However, she understands how news reports could drastically impact her, as the daughter of a Jewish mother growing up in late 1930s/early 1940s France. She and her little sister are only half-Jewish, but she suspects that will be more than enough to count for the new regime, just as it has been for her father’s estranged parents. It is a sad burden for a child to carry in writer-artist Sara del Giudice’s graphic novel Behind the Curtain, which is now on-sale in digital formats.

Initially, Yael and Emilie grew up in a very social household filled with guests and select family members. Unfortunately, the parties tapered off as their beloved mother’s health deteriorated. With her death, they saw their family on their maternal side much less often, especially after her father remarried Ophelie, whom Yael considered a pretty blonde ditz. She also suspects she half-spied her father with her new stepmother, in a somewhat compromising position, while her mother was still alive.

However, Ophelie is not a threat to the girls. In fact, she will be quite concerned for their safety when France surrenders to Germany. As a veteran, who was married to their Jewish mother, their father is also in some danger. Frankly, everyone recognizes the potential peril, but they respond cautiously—too cautiously.

Unlike similar narratives, Behind the Curtain almost entirely focuses on the years leading up to the notorious round-ups. Throughout most of the graphic novel, Yael and her sister lead mostly normal lives, but her increasing awareness of the rising tide of anti-Semitism makes it all bittersweet and eventually quite ominous.

Wolves of War: Another Final Mission Movie

Wars are like the old Knicks-Pacers games, in that they aren’t over until they are truly, officially over. Jack Wallace understands that only too well. Even though everyone knows WWII is down to its final days, he is still recruited for a potential-suicide mission in Giles Alderson’s Wolves of War, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Wallace is the only parent his little girl has left, but he worries his success as a commando might have profoundly changed him as a person. Regardless, there is no guarantee he will survive this mission to see her again. Under the command of Captain Norwood, Wallace and his hodge-podge squad must parachute into no man’s land Bavaria, to rescue expat Professor Hopper from the National Socialist “Werewolves,” the fanatical remnants of the SS engaging in scorched earth guerilla warfare.

Supposedly, Hopper and his daughter Hannah were trapped in Germany when the war broke out, but he was never a regime sympathizer. Obviously, he is not a political science genius. As it happens, he is a physicist, who has developed a rival atomic bomb. If Wallace’s team can secure the professor and his notes, they can call in an airlift. Otherwise, it will become a carpet-bombing airstrike.

In some ways, Wolves of War is a throwback to old fashioned WWII films, but Wallace’s existential angst definitely feels contemporary. However, its stiff-upper-lip Britishness is appealing. The action is respectably gritty, but it lacks a big set-piece crescendo.

MASH: When Television Changed Forever, on Reelz

During the early to mid-1980s, if you didn’t want to the local nightly news, you probably had to watch MASH instead (or maybe Taxi). Therefore, even if you did not love the show, you still might have some nostalgia for it. That makes it perfect for Reelz latest nostalgia package. Producer-director-cowriter-narrator Bruce Osborne revisits the show with surviving cast-members (who didn’t have something better to do) in MASH: When Television Changed Forever, which premieres tomorrow on Reelz.

To Osborne and Reelz’s credit, the show acknowledges it all began with a novel written by Dr. Richard Hornberger, a former Korean War surgeon writing under the pen-name Richard Hooker. However, Dr. Hornberger’s later MASH novels reflected a much more conservative political perspective than the film or TV series. We also hear briefly from Elliott Gould, discussing the Robert Altman film.

A handful of TV critics maybe overstate matters a little when they give MASH credit for pioneering multiple storylines within one half-hour sitcom episode. However, they have a point when they single out episodes that break new ground, by breaking format, like “The Interview,” conceived as a black-and-white TV documentary, profiling the MASH unit.

Mike Farrell, Jamie Farr, Jeff Maxwell (who often recurred as Pvt. Igor Straminsky), and the late Burt Metcalfe (the series’ final showrunner, to whom the special is dedicated) are all present and accounted for, which is probably enough for most hardcore fans. However, nobody mentions the brilliance of Johnny Mandel’s theme, wisely retained from the film. As soon as you hear it, it changes your mood, priming you for the show’s blend of humor and tragedy (check out Grady Tate’s rendition here).

Of course, without MASH, there would be no After-MASH, but nobody mentions the short-lived spinoff. Indeed, it is all positive, so nobody addresses the controversy surrounding the character Capt. Oliver “Spearchucker” Jones, even though he was played in the series by Timothy Brown, one of only four holdovers from the film. Brown’s exit from the show was also somewhat controversial, at the time, being the only black recurring cast-member.

TIFF ’22: The Umbrella Men

The Bo-Kaap is a neighborhood in Capetown, but it sure gives of NOLA vibes, thanks to the high concentration of pre-1850 architecture and the competitive marching jazz bands. Maintaining the jazz traditions takes hard work and it also costs money. Unfortunately, the bank is poised to foreclose on the Goema club, so they can flip it to a mobbed-up developer. To save his late father’s neighborhood institution, Jerome and his friends go where the money is in John Barker’s caper comedy, The Umbrella Men, which premiered internationally at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

Jerome did not want to run the Goema or its affiliated marching band, the Umbrella Men, but everyone expects him to step up after his father’s funeral. Instead, he just wants to greet his old pal Mortimer when he is finally released from prison and then return to his life in Joburg. However, the way his father’s old gangster rival Tariq venally covets the property just rubs him the wrong way. Unfortunately, the local Bo-Kaap neighborhood bank is calling in all his father’s debts, so he decides to steal directly from them to pay-off their liens.

The heist caper that unfolds is pretty cleverly conceived in its own right, incorporating Capetown’s old tunnel system and the noonday gun fired every afternoon at twelve-sharp. Yet, it is the music, composed by Kyle Shepherd and performed by trumpeter Darren English, Buddy Wells on reeds, and the Loukmaan Adams Band that really gives the film its appealing character. Eventually, Jerome rediscovers his musical soul on both banjo and trumpet, while planning a complicated Rififi-style operation.

Lovers of New Orleans culture will really get warm fuzzies when the plot culminates during the annual Kaapse Klopse carnival, which commemorates the one day off granted to slaves during the colonial era. (It brings to mind Sundays at Congo Square, except it was 52 times more severe.) Regardless, the music is joyous and swinging. There is maybe a slight highlife-ish flavor to it, which makes it fun and distinctive.

Midlengths: Mekong Hotel

Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul’s films can drain the energy out of viewers, so maybe it was fitting for him to make a vampire film. He presents this “story” in his usual dreamy style, but he still serves up a few bloody entrails in the hour-long Mekong Hotel, which screens as part of the Metrograph’s series Midlengths, consisting of short features or long shorts, around the sixty-minute mark.

Tong and Phon meet repeatedly on the balcony of their hotel overlooking the Mekong River. They feel like they have met before and maybe they have. Frankly, it might seem to be an inappropriate time for romance, because of the expected flooding and the waves of displaced people who will soon rush into the city as a result. Also, Phon is sharing a room with her mother, who happens to be a vampire, who feeds on men in the hotel. However, she did not eat the guts of Tong’s poor dog. That was another Thai “Pob” ghost.

It all unfolds to the sounds of Chai Bhatana’s acoustic guitar melodies, which Weerasethakul requests from his old friend during the prologue. Presumably, that is why the film is sometimes described as a “docu-hybrid.” Regardless, Bhatana’s music (largely inspired by Spanish classical guitar) bring a lot to the film. In fact, for some of us, they just might be the film.

Weerasethakul employs his familiar long-held, static shots, but the narrative is especially sketchy this time around—not surprisingly, since it was essentially cobbled together from notes for a project that never came to fruition. Waste not, want not. Regardless, despite the supernatural elements, this is not a film for horror fans. Indeed, it could be the most peaceful, lulling film about ghosts and vampires stalking victims during a catastrophic flood that you will ever see.

Mysterious Circumstance: The Death of Meriwether Lewis

For the Jefferson Administration, his alleged suicide was very similar to the Vincent Foster incident, but Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis & Clark) was also a national hero and a high-ranking office-holder, as well as a presidential confidant. His decision to kill himself was certainly rather sudden, giving rise to doubts that evolved into conspiracy theories. The contradictory accounts provided by the witness who found his body only fanned the flames of skepticism and suspicion. Director-screenwriter Clark Richey presents Rashomon-style several conflicting versions of what might have happened that fateful night in Mysterious Circumstance: The Death of Meriwether Lewis, which opens today in Los Angeles.

According to Priscilla Grinder, who maintained the remote travelers’ “inn,” Grinder’s Stand, with her husband Robert, Gov. Lewis acted erratically when he arrived, and became even twitchier during dinner. Then late that night, he stumbled out to the front yard, where he shot himself—twice. Or maybe not. She changed her story several times over the years, but that is the one she tells his friend Alexander Wilson, when he comes to investigate on Jefferson’s behalf.

Over the years, Major John Neely, the Chickasaw agent, who was traveling with Lewis, has become one of historians’ prime suspects. His claimed he was off chasing their runaway pack horses while Lewis was at Grinder’s Stand, which definitely sounds fishy. Richey certainly presents him as a potential co-conspirator, along with the rest of Lewis’s traveling party and the conveniently absent Robert Grinder.

The very real premise of Mysterious Circumstance is intriguing, but the performances are a little rough in patches. However, Billy Slaughter has some effective moments of world-weary resignation as Wilson and Sonny Marinelli is appropriately fierce and flinty as old Grinder. As it happens, the film’s top-billed star, John Schneider (from the original Dukes of Hazzard) gets relatively little screentime as the scheming Neely.

Jack Strong, in the Epoch Times

Ironically, CIA Officer David Forden, who contributed so much to American national security, was born on September 11th. To remember him and Col. Ryszard Kuklinski of the Polish People's Army, who passed game-changing intel to Forden to avert planned Soviet military aggression, you can find my review of the excellent Polish film Jack Strong, now up at THE EPOCH TIMES here.

American Gigolo, on Showtime

The original 1980 Richard Gere film was the first of the super-slick blockbusters Jerry Bruckheimer has produced, but it still delved into a gritty criminal underworld hidden from polite society, the way Paul Schrader often did in his best films. For the sequel-ish series, Bruckheimer is still on-board as an executive producer, but Schrader was cut out of the process. At least he gets credit for creating the characters. Even if Richard Gere were not a Tibetan Buddhist and an outspoken critic of the CCP’s human rights abuses (very much to his credit), he would still be a little too old to play Julian Kaye, the high-class hustler. Despite all the fudging and retconning, creator David Hollander manages to channel the vibe of Schrader’s film pretty well in American Gigolo, which premieres tomorrow on Showtime.

It still starts with Giorgio Moroder & Debbie Harry’s “Call Me,” because it would be crazy not to. You maybe thought Lauren Hutton’s conscience finally spurred her to alibi Richard Gere at the end of the source film, but apparently it didn’t really happen that way. Instead, Det. Sunday discovered Kaye asleep next to the dead body of a client and convinced him to confess, the way they always did in NYPD Blue. Fifteen years later (in the mid-2000s) a terminally ill hitman makes a deathbed confession, which DNA-testing confirms.

Suddenly, Kaye is free and exonerated. So, who set him up? Frankly, Sunday seems more interested in that question than he is. Kaye kept in shape while serving his time, but he is not eager to go back to work for his old procurer, the notorious madam known as “The Queen.” As we learn in flashbacks, he had good reasons to resent her, even before his “troubles.” On the other hand, he would kind of like to see his “special client” Michelle Stratton (previously played by Hutton), but life with her rich and controlling husband has been hard for her.

There is a lot of flashy excess in American Gigolo, which is sort of the point (presumably, much of Kaye’s wardrobe is still Armani). The distinguished-looking Gere is probably too distinguished to play Kaye in his late thirties-ish, but Jon Bernthal is a spookily close likeness for him. Incidentally, there are a few Buddhist references in the first three episodes provided for review, which would be cool if they were intended as a hat-tip to Gere (seriously, without him, this series probably wouldn’t exist).

Bernthal is a little tougher and steelier than Gere was in the film, but that rather makes sense, since his Kaye has just done fifteen years of relatively hard time. In a gender-flip hardly worth noting, Rosie O’Donnell takes over from Hector Elizondo as Det. Sunday. In fact, she is one of the best aspects of the show, eschewing her regular shtick, in favor of dry sarcasm and world-weary cynicism.

Wedding Season, on Hulu

Katie O'Connell's wedding with Hugo Delaney was one-half Three Weddings and a Funeral and one-half Game of Thrones’ “Red Wedding” episode. The groom and his family will be killed, but she manages to run away and keep on running. The cops are convinced she murdered everyone, but her naïve on-again-off-again lover believes she must be innocent in Daran Johnson & Oliver Lyttelton’s Wedding Season, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

For some reason, O’Connell kept assuring Stefan Bridges she was determined to marry the rich and obnoxious Delaney, despite their weird chemistry. Nevertheless, their paths kept crossing at weddings. It was usually just a matter of lucky proximity, because they do not exactly share similar social circles. Unfortunately, Bridges really called attention to himself at O’Connell’s wedding, inviting her to make a Graduate-style escape, which she brutally declined. Even though he left before the massacre, the cops naturally suspect him, so O’Connell considerately breaks him out of the station.

As we learn in flashbacks, the Delaneys were a seriously mobbed-up family. Whoever killed them is now chasing the fugitive couple—and they mean business. However, Bridges has lingering trust issues, for good reason. While O’Connell and Bridges try to evade the police, the escalating body-count makes them look more guilty.

Wedding Season is a pretty amusing combination of romantic comedy and ruthless criminal vendettas. Frankly, Gavin Drea plays Bridges with such bumbling shtick, he really starts to try viewer patience. However, Rosa Salazar more than compensates as the fierce, charming, and borderline psychotic O’Connell. You really can believe she would do almost anything, which she will. Watching her pull him through the 39 Steps-like chases sequences and near escapes is quite entertaining.

The Anthrax Attacks, on Netflix

According to the U.S. Postal Service creed: “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” However, a domestic terror campaign shut down the mail processing facility in Brentwood, Maryland. That aspect of the chaotic sequence of events is what most concern’s Dan Krauss’s documentary, The Anthrax Attacks, which premieres Thursday on Netflix.

The nation was already unnerved by the September 11^th terror attacks when the first Anthrax spores struck their target. It was a confused time, but the FBI mobilized significant resources to capture the perpetrator. However, their investigation was somewhat compromised, because they were being advised by the man they were hunting, USAMRIID researcher, Dr. Bruce Ivins. At least he is the presumed Anthrax weaponizer.

In many ways, the epic investigation was unprecedented, so much of the criticism Krauss airs seems like cheap Monday morning quarterbacking. Yes, the FBI Director and Attorney General kept constant tabs on the investigation. Otherwise, they easily could have been lambasted for negligent disinterest, given the extraordinary circumstances.

Likewise, the amount of time it took fully test and disinfect the Brentwood facility is presented as an unconscionable scandal, but the Feds were in a damned-if-they-did-damned-if-they-didn’t situation. Life was much more dependent on the U.S. Mail in 2001, especially for things like Social Security checks, utility payments, and small business invoicing. Honestly, it is as easy to imagine poor grannies complaining on-camera how they nearly starved, because they couldn’t get their social security. Plus, there was that institutional “neither snow nor rain” ethos that mail delivery must remain on schedule.

The Rope, on Topic

Ironically, nobody mentions String Theory in this series, even though it follows a group of scientists studying the origins of the universe, who become obsessed with a mysterious length of cord. Somehow, it just appeared, but it appears to stretch unendingly through the forest surrounding their research institute in co-creators Dominique Rocher (director of The Night Eats the World) & Eric Forestier’s three-part French series The Rope, which premieres Thursday on Topic.

Bernhardt Mueller is the director of a remote astronomical observatory. Its equipment is old, but still powerful and the sudden vogue of theories he and his wife Agnes hypothesized are poised to give the institute a new lease on life. Weirdly, a week before their critical “data harvesting” Serge Morel, the facility manager literally stumbles across a length of rope in the forest. Ulrik, Agnes Mueller’s colleague and secret lover, manages to bang up his leg trying to follow it, so he will not be available the next morning for Bernard’s rope-following hike. He will be the lucky one.

Days later, Mueller’s party remains unaccounted for. Of course, he and Morel managed to recruit the most angsty group possible, including terminally ill research director Sophie Rauk, Leila, an anxiety-ridden data scientist and her increasingly frustrated husband Joseph, and visiting scholar Dani Johannes, whose work explores the relationship between science and her lost religious faith. Out of all of them, Morel is the only you would want to be lost in the wild with. Yet, the rope seems to exert an obsessive hold over some of them, driving them forward, despite the risks and the dead bodies they start to encounter.

The premise of The Rope is a bit like other suddenly-in-Hell-or-Purgatory films, like the endless stairs in Black Ops, but it also shows the perspective of those not stuck in the fantastical Sisyphean situation. In fact, it is even more compelling watching Agnes and Ulrik trying to fathom the depths of the universe than Morel’s crew compulsively following the rope. Still, the contrast between the mysteries of science and the mysteries of the cosmically inexplicable distinctively bifurcates and dramatically distinguishes The Rope from its predecessors.

He Who Fights with Monsters: a WWII Golem Fable

The Golem of legend is an avenger, but its unthinking actions often entail unintended consequences for those who summon it. As a result, it frequently punishes hubris. The desperate Jewish population of occupied Prague has no hubris left to rebuke, but the wakened Golem remains an unpredictable wild card in Francesco Artibani’s graphic novel He Who Fights with Monsters, illustrated by Werther Dell’Edera, which is now on-sale wherever comics are sold.

Now that the Soviets have “liberated” Prague, the old puppeteer can tell his story through his puppets to an interested officer. Three years ago, Jewish Dr. Radek Molnar did his best to tend to his patients, thanks to forged papers. However, he was not a proper arm-carrying member of the resistance, like his lover Zuzka. Yet, perhaps that is why the elderly professor they sheltered is so convinced Molnar is sufficiently righteous to re-animate the Golem. He even knows where the original clay and ancient texts are hidden in the city’s surviving synagogue.

This would indeed be an opportune time to raise the Golem. The occupying Germans are still taking brutal reprisals for the assassination of Heydrich. Transports are due to ship thousands of prisoners to the concentration camps. There is plenty for the Golem to avenge. Yet, the passage of time and the previous deaths on its hands have made the Golem unexpectedly mournful regarding the dire state of humanity.

It turns out, the Golem is one of two highly intriguing characters in Artibani’s fable-like war-horror story. The other is the puppeteer, a former informer. Instead of illustrating Nietzsche’s warning regarding monster-fighting, he is an acutely tragic example of what happens when you make a deal with the devil.

UFOs, on MHz

The French Space administrations office for UFO investigations, known as GEPAN, developed such a flaky reputation, it rebranded several times, changing its acronym to SEPRA and then to GEIPAN. Didier Mathure was maybe part of the problem. The closed-minded director of CNES assigned him to be the interim head, in order to clear its cases and shut it down. However, Mathure ill-advisedly develops Fox Mulder-like tendencies in creators Clemence Dargent & Martin Douaire’s UFOs (a.k.a. OVNIs), which premieres tomorrow on MHz.

Mathure was an elite scientist at CNES until the rocket he dedicated the better part of his career to exploded after take-off. As penance, the slimy agency director transfers Mathure to GEPAN, with the clear expectation he will close it down, stifling all talk of UFOs in the process. However, the perverse combination of Mathure’s spectacularly bad PR skills and his naïve misapplications of scientific method have the opposite effect. Interest in UFOs boom, along with reports.

Mathure does not necessarily believe one way or the other, but veteran French Air Force officer Valerie Delbrosse does. In fact, she encourages (blackmails) Mathure to make his findings public. However, that would hurt his ex-wife Elise Conti’s prospects of securing a high-level appointment at the European space agency. Still, he is starting to admit there might be something to a handful of select cases his predecessor started investigating, before disappearing on a sudden leave of absence.

UFOs plays a lot of its X-Files-style business for laughs, particularly an alien-abducted flamingo and the bawdy postcards Mathure’s missing predecessor sends the staff, which they assume are clues. However, the underlying conspiracy narrative is still sufficiently interesting that it would probably still hold up if the tone were more serious. The late 1970s milieu adds a lot of funky texture (the references to the under-appreciated The Invaders are especially on-point), but the series sometimes fudges a little. Technically, Albert Barille’s Once Upon a Time…Space aired after Giscard’s presidency, but whatever.

Regardless, Melvil Poupaud, radically playing against type, is the engine that drive the show’s comedy. He is a lot like Fraser Crane—often painful to watch, but somehow, we keep rooting for him. He also has terrific chemistry with Geraldine Pailhas, who is highly entertaining when cutting him down to size. On the other hand, the shtickiness of Vera Clouseau (as the hippy dippy GEPAN receptionist-case interviewer) and Quentin Dolmaire (as the Trekker computer specialist) gets a little tiresome.

The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time: 101-89

Perhaps the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho was the first single horror movie scene to inspire an entire documentary analyzing its cultural legacy: Alexandre O. Philippe’s 78/52. There was still a lot more genius to the Hitchcock classic, but horror films are often defined by particular scenes, often those that are notable controversial or transgressive. Shudder counts them down listical-style in The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time, which premieres Wednesday on the streamer.

Right off the bat, the opening episode raises questions about methodology. Is this really about the 101 “scariest moments” or is that just another way of saying the scariest movies. Could some films appear multiple times in the series, for different scenes? Not in the first episode. However, the curation is surprisingly thoughtful, showing an awareness of the entire history of horror films.

The first episode touches a lot of old school fan bases, including a classic Universal monster movie (The Wolf Man), a Hammer horror film, Val Lewton’s original Cat People, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse, and Hitchcock’s The Birds. It is a bit of a head-scratcher to see Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers make the cut, but Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot was a worthy call, especially since it is often unfairly overlooked as a TV-movie.

Alan Rudolph’s Remember My Name

Stalkers aren't just for the rich and famous, like in Play Misty for Me or The Bodyguard. In this case a recently paroled woman is stalking working-class Neil and Barbara Curry. It certainly isn’t for their money. It is personal. Yet, the real tragedy is that the original score, composed and performed by blues and jazz singer Alberta Hunter is not more widely available. The cast is pretty notable too in director-screenwriter Alan Rudolph’s 1978 drama Remember My Name, which screens at the Roxy Cinema this week.

Emily is fresh out of prison and looking to cause trouble in general, but particularly for Barbara Curry. It starts with some vandalism, but escalates rapidly. She also lurks outside her husband’s construction site, but his response is a little different. In fact, when confronted by his wife, Curry sounds rather evasive and even a bit ashamed. Definitely something transpired between them, which will somewhat shift audience sympathies as Rudolph teases it out.

Meanwhile, the television news keeps telling its viewers they should care more about an earthquake that rocked Budapest, as Hunter’s bluesy tunes (recorded in a special session produced by John Hammond) swing the soundtrack. It is perhaps fitting that Robert Altman produced Remember My Name, because Rudolph’s approach is often quite Altman-esque. That is another reason why it is so odd this film is so rarely programmed.

It is a bit ironic to see Anthony Perkins cast as a married construction worker, but he perfectly expresses Curry’s guilty squirreliness. As usual, he definitely projects a sense something is not entirely right with him, albeit not to the degree of his iconic roles. He happened to be playing opposite his real-life wife Berry Berenson, who was murdered on September 11^th, aboard American Airline Flight 11. She really is terrific as Barbara, so it is odd she only had a handful of further roles.

On the other hand, Remember My Name is fully stocked with supporting players who would later make names for themselves, including Jeff Goldblum and Alfre Woodard, as Emily’s boss and work-rival at the Woolworth-like retailer. Plus, Tim Thomerson (“Jack Deth”) briefly appears as Neil Curry’s co-worker.

Nevertheless, if this film were better remembered, Emily would probably be known as the role of Geraldine Chaplin’s career. You can definitely see how she might have influenced Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female. Yet, Chaplin brings a vulnerability to her character that sets Emily apart from just about every other movie-stalker.

Of course, for those of us with good taste in music, the biggest star of Remember is Hunter’s music. Thematically, her songs are totally the blues, but they are all arranged in a swinging up-tempo jazz style, recorded with legendary jazz musicians, like Doc Cheatham on trumpet, Vic Dickenson on trombone, Budd Johnson on tenor, and Connie Kay on drums.

Recipes for Love and Murder, in the Epoch Times

The South African countryside is beautiful and the mutton curry sounds delish, but the amateur sleuthing is maybe a little too cozy in Acorn's new cozy mystery series RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER. Epoch Times review up here.

The Bad Seed Returns, on Lifetime

Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed was like the “A24 Elevated Horror” of 1956. Based on Maxwell Anderson’s stage adaptation of William March’s novel, LeRoy’s Oscar-nominated film has inspired thousands of knock-offs, but it never spawned a proper series—only a pair of made-for-TV remakes. However, Lifetime finally takes a stab at franchising the killer moppet with a sequel to its 2015 original movie. Emma Grossman has grown into a seemingly healthy teenager, but she is still a stone-cold psychopath in The Bad Seed Returns, directed by Louise Archambault, which premieres Monday on the network.

Grossman is obviously a high-functioning sociopath, because she has managed to ingratiate herself with the cliquey girls of her high school dance team. You wouldn’t want to run against her for team captain though. Accidents still seem to befall people who stand in her way.

Fortunately, Grossman still seems to like have her Aunt Angela around, but she is not so crazy about her Uncle Robert and their infant son. Having posed as the victim of a crazy father in the prior film, Grossman has milked the resulting sympathy for all its worth. She still has Dr. March (played by the Patty McCormack, the original “Bad Seed” in the 1956 classic) snowed in their video sessions (or she just summons her as a mental sounding board). However, Kat Sandberg is not fooled by her. Grossman doesn’t recognize her initially, but they used to go to the same school—back when all those bad things happened.

This Bad Seed sequel is not a classic by any stretch, but it is still probably one of Lifetime’s better originals of recent vintage. Archambault, who has several festival-selected films to her credit, creates some competent cat-and-mouse tension, while the script (co-written by lead thesp Mckenna Grace, Ross Burge and Barbara Marshall) rather subversively inserts the “Bad Seed” into a 9120-ish setting. The chaos that results is certainly diverting. It also helps that neither of her foster parents are completely stupid, since they both start to suspect something while substantial time is left in the film.

The Harbinger: Buckle-Up for Some Craziness

Daniel Snyder went from one Ponzi scheme to another. The first was the traditional financial kind. The second involved eternal souls. To avoid ruin and save his daughter, Snyder made a deal with the devil, but the terms are decidedly unequal and predatory. However, there might be hope outside the Christian faith in Will Klipstine’s The Harbinger, which releases today in theaters and on-demand.

Snyder’s daughter Rosalie is a bit of a problem child. In fact, she maybe isn’t even Rosalie any more. Regardless, she is part of the reason the Snyders must relocate so frequently. Apparently, he has some sinister obligations he must fulfill in their new town, but he is reluctant to get down to it. Instead, he approaches Floating Hawk, a Native American spiritualist for counseling. Inexplicably, she prohibits Rosalie from stepping foot on reservation property, but she is willing to parcel out some cryptic advice to Snyder.

There is a whole lot of crazy stuff in Harbinger, including Faustian bargains, Native American spiritualism, and honest-to-gosh, the ghosts of 1920s gangsters. Believe it or not, the ways they all relate is kind of clever. There are many surprises in the film that are tricky to write-around, in order to avoid spoilers. However, it is maybe okay to give Klipstine and co-screenwriter Amy Mills credit for the notion different laws apply to lands associated by Native religions and those governed by Christianity—and it just so happens the border between them runs straight through the Snyder’s new town.

Sometimes, The Harbinger is so over-the-top, it only seems to be missing Nic Cage, but Klipstine does his best to Cage-rage in his place. There are times when the film is completely off-the-rails, including several appearances from Satan. Nevertheless, it repeatedly earns points for originality. Klipstine really goes broke throughout the film, which is cool, especially when his ideas land (a good 60% to 70% of the time).

Burial: Stalin’s Macabre Trophy

The Soviets had a strange corpse fetish. To this day, you can still gawk at Lenin’s embalmed body in Red Square. Alas, poor Gorby probably won’t be getting that treatment. Stalin had something very ghoulishly different in mind for Hitler’s corpse. However, secretly ferrying it from Berlin to Moscow will be quite a tricky assignment for Brana Vasilyeva and her comrades in director-screenwriter Ben Parker’s Burial, which opens tomorrow in New York.

For a skinhead punk, rumors of Hitler’s body possibly surviving someplace were too tantalizing to ignore, even in 1991. However, when he breaks into elderly Vasilyeva’s London townhouse, she is the one who has the drop on him. When he comes to, handcuffed to the radiator, she decides to tell him the full story, because she knows it isn’t what he wants to hear.

Only Vasilyeva and her commander knew the exact nature of their mission. They are supposed to sneak Hitler’s body into the USSR clandestinely, but that means they will have to fight their way through the self-styled “Werewolves,” remnants of the National Socialist occupiers engaging into scorched-earth guerilla warfare. Unfortunately, when Vasilyeva’s commanding officer is killed in combat, the next senior officer is the cretinous Captain Ilyasov, who is more interested in rape and plunder than completing a mission he was not briefed on.

It is because of Soviet soldiers like him that the Poles are so hostile to the advancing Russians. Lukasz is a perfect case in point. As an ethnic German Pole, he suffered at the hands of both the Germans and the Soviets. However, Vasilyev manages to win his trust, but it does not extend very far beyond her and her trusted subordinate officer Tor Oleynik (so dubbed in honor of the Norse god, because of what he did to some Germans with a hammer).

Watching Burial, you have to feel sympathy for the Polish people. Time and again, Vasilyeva and Oleynik are confronted with the brutality of their own fellow Soviets and the resulting bitterness festering in the civilians, whose help they need. Parker never sugar-coats the brutality of either regime, openly suggesting something close to equivalency between them. Although this is a war film, it gets pretty intense and even spooky, given the way the “Werewolves” take their nickname to heart (and their weaponized use of hallucinogenic drugs).

Charlotte Vega makes a suitably quiet but steely action lead as Vasilyeva, but she is still no match for Harriet Walter, playing her hardnosed, butt-kicking senior citizen analog. (Reportedly, Dame Diana Rigg was originally cast in the role before her death, leaving some big shoes to fill, but Walter acquits herself impressively.)