How about a few films before the end of June.

Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter 1 (2024), directed by Kevin Costner. Saga indeed. This three-hour film meanders along telling at least three stories, moving us from Kansas, to Wyoming, to Montana. It tells the story of a non-existent town named Horizon that attracts settlers of various stripes sometime in the mid 1860s. The scenery is magnificent and the echoes of earlier films such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, Cheyenne Autumn, and others float through the film. The acting is passable from Abbey Lee’s Marigold, the hooker whose heart may not be all gold, to Sienna Miller’s Frances Kittredge, the newly widowed mother trying to re-establish a life for her and her daughter, to Sam Worthington’s stoic Lt. Trent Gephart, to harried wagon train master Luke Wilson as Matthew van Leyden, to upright Danny Huston as Col. Albert Houghton, to taciturn Kevin Costner as Ellison Hayes, mysterious prospector and loner, and quite a few others. The storylines, however, are muddled, and the ending with shots that move us forward to Chapter 2 is confusing. Whether everything will finally come together in this four chapter saga remains to be seen, although we may never see chapters 3 and 4.What we have in chapter 1 is good to look at, and there are intriguing and engaging moments, such as the opening raid on the settlement that wants to be Horizon, or the interaction between Hayes and a bad guy as they walk toward the cabin where Marigold waits with a child not hers. The depiction of peoples both indigenous and white is raw. I am glad I saw the film, although it is not completely satisfying or successful.

 

Ça Sent La Coupe (2017), directed by Patrice Sauve. The film is set in the 2009-2010 hockey season when the Montreal Canadiens, improbably, went to the conference finals. The focus is on a small group of buddies who gather in Max’s apartment (Max is played by Louis-Jose Houde) to watch most of Les Canadiens’ games. Max has left his job as an engineer to manage his father’s hockey memorabilia and souvenir shop. The plot turns on the moment Max’s girlfriend Julie (Emilie Bibeau) walks out and leaves him. Max is in turmoil. He is still grieving the loss of his parents and now Julie leaves. His life is upended, and his friends begin to worry about his retreat into depression. The film celebrates friendship, hockey, the Montreal Canadiens. It also looks at relationships and grief. It brings to weighty themes (grief and loss) a delicate touch. The humour is attractive. The characters are engaging. I did think we would see more of the kid who covets a signed Saku Koivu card. This kid’s back story is intriguing, but it remains way in the background. For a fan such as I, the film appeals. Now only if we could have that smell of the cup come true again. The cup, by the way, is the one named after Lord Stanley.

 

The Power (1968), directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal. This film has the look of a George Pal film, the colour and the special effects. It tells a story of telekinesis. A group of scientists work in a Human endurance centre, experimenting with people to see their limits of endurance. This is part of the space program in America. The plot concerns this group – six people – one of whom has the power of telekinesis and who begins to kill the other members of the group. Noteworthy are the rather daring, for the time, moments: the bulging eyes and protruding tongue of the deceased Dr. Hallson (Arthur O’Connell) and the attempted seduction of Dr. Melnicker (Nehemiah Persoff) by a flirtatious convention girl (played by Miss Beverly Hills). Perhaps I should note that Dr. Melnicker is dead, as the seductress learns once she place a kiss on his still lips. We have an assortment of players from Aldo Ray’s sinister gas station attendant to Barbara Nichol’s slatternly roadhouse waitress to Earl Holliman’s scientist to Michael Rennie’s government inspector. Suzanne Pleshette and George Hamilton round out the cast. Hamilton plays Dr. Tanner, head of the Human Endurance Committee, and our protagonist. He is on the trail of the mysterious Adam Hart. The film has elements of the murder mystery, science fiction, and romantic comedy and these elements do not mesh successfully. We even have weirdness, as in the scene with the elderly couple in the desert. There are some striking moments such as Dr. Tanner’s merry-go-round ride or his hallucinatory vision of his own decapitated head. What we have here is a precursor for David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

 

Scorching Fury (1952), directed by Rick Freers. I am not sure I should bother with a notice of this film. However, should you want an example of a film that strives for an arthouse look and fails miserably, then this film is for you. Take for example, the bad guy Ward Canepa (Sherwood Price). For two thirds of the film, we only see his boots and striped trousers and gun belt. We hear his cackling after he does something ugly. Just why we do not see his face until just before the end is a mystery to me. He is not someone we have met and now when we see him we can say, oh gosh look who it is. Nope. His appearance is kept from us for no reason whatsoever. Then we have numerous shots of cavalry and Native Americans taken from earlier films, notably Stagecoach, that have nothing to do with the rest of the story. Nothing. As for the story, it unfolds in a series of flashbacks. You know, a slicing of the narrative that is artsy. Right. Then we have the acting. Hmmm. Richard Devon as Kirk Flamer is probably the most familiar face. The rest of the cast will not be familiar. So much of this film just hangs there without resolution: the cavalry/Natives conflict, the small group in the desert without water, the bad guy who only appears from the waist down. It there is something noteworthy here, then it is the fact that just about all of this film takes place on location. I guess location shooting was cheaper than building sets.

 

Once Upon a Time in China (1991), directed by Tsui Hark. This is the first of five films in the series, and it tells of a changing China at the end of the nineteenth century. Our protagonist is martial arts expert and doctor of traditional medicine, Wong Fei-hung (Jet Li). The film is sprawling and lavish, and the fight choreography is first rate, especially the jaw-dropping fight between Wong and Iron Vest Yim (Yen Shi-kwan), his martial arts rival. The film is a mixture of comedy, romance, adventure, and historical recovery of a troubed time in China. Both American and British imperial forces are trying to maintain a foothold of power, and one Chinese gang, the Shaho gang, assists the American Jackson (Jonathan Isgar) in his human trafficking enterprise. Men ae shipped off to work mines and railroads, and women are shipped of as prostitutes, all at their own cost. As the story unfolds, Aunt 13 (Rosamund Kwan), Wong’s love interest, is captured by the villains who intend to send her to America. Of course, Wong and his helpers rescue her and others rudely ripped from their daily lives by villains out to make money. Perhaps not up there with Yimou Zhang’s martial arts films, Once Upon a Time in China is well worth seeing. The title places it with a couple of other films with similar titles, all dealing with a country in changing times.

 

Tenebre (1982), directed by Dario Argento. This exercise in giallo cinema impresses with its fluid camera and architectural complexity. The acting may be overblown, but the narrative is as compulsive as the most intricate of murder mysteries. Here the murderer (well – spoiler - two murderers) we see lurking about in the shadows, his gloved hands with straight razor or knife or axe. It turns out that the murderer takes his cue from Peter Neal’s (Anthony Franciosa) latest mystery novel, Tenebrae; he sets out to rid the world, or Rome at least, of deviants and perverts. Accordingly, he murders two lesbians and a shoplifter. Mr. Neal finds himself caught up in the mystery and he sets out to discover the identity of the murderer. I am leaving much out here, but suffice to say that the film is obsessed with seeing, with the voyeuristic perspective that we have in film makers such as Hitchcock or Brian de Palma. Argento’s sense of colour and composition make the film interesting to look at, intensifying the theme of looking the narrative incorporates. The scenes of murder are, as we expect from giallo films, bloody, perhaps excessively so. The section that deals with a fierce Doberman is especially vicious. References to Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” thread through the proceedings. Mr. Neal and his young driver Gianni (Christian Borromeo) serve as the Holmes/Watson pair, although here Watson’s fate is rather dire. We also have John Saxon turning up in a hat he is fond of. 

Nosferatu (2024), directed by Robert Eggers. This remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu: A Symphonie of Horror, manages to give us visual echoes of Murnau’s film and Werner Herzog’s 1979 version with Klaus Kinski made up to resemble Max Schreck. Here, however, the Count Orlok character (Bill Skarsgard), although dressed like Schreck’s Orlok, looks more like Vlad the Impaler thank Schreck’s or Kinski’s Orlok. The film, for all its earnestness in giving us a version of Dracula, offers little that is new, aside perhaps from the look and sound of Skarsgard’s Orlok. Willem DeFoe, who played Max Shreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000), turns up here as Professor Albert Eberhart von Franz, this film’s version of Van Helsing. The story unfolds as we would expect. No surprises. The distinguishing aspects of the film are its lighting and camera work that give the proceedings a suitably brooding, gothic atmosphere. Costumes and sets are good. The focus here is on the Mina Harker character, here named Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp). Also noteworthy is Simon McBurney as Knock, this film’s version of Renfield. All in all, a film that pays homage to both Murnau and Herzog, but does not outdo them.

 

Parallel Mothers (2021), directed by Pedro Almodovar. With his characteristic colors and décor, Almodovar here weaves a story that lets us know the past informs the present. Past absences, past choices, past events political and otherwise, make their mark on the present. This is the case for both of the protagonists here, two women who meet while giving birth. One is in her forties, Janis (Penelope Cruz) and the other is still a minor, Ana (Milena Smit). Both are single mothers, and Janis comes from a lineage of single mothers. They bond and before too long find themselves living together. Meanwhile Janis has managed to have her child’s father, the forensic archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde), arrange to exhume a mass grave from the Civil War. This grave has the body of Janis’s grandfather. While Janis (named for Janis Joplin, by the way!) seeks to give her grandfather a proper burial, Ana deals with her mother who places her theatrical career above family. Then there is the matter of each woman’s child. Here the film reminded me of Born in Absurdistan (1999), although the two films are quite different in tone and focus. Almodovar’s film is beautifully crafted and sympathetically drawn to its characters. We have no villains here, just human beings with all their faults, their hopes, their anxieties, and their relationships messy and loving. This is a poetic look at motherhood, family, and human complications.