Ilya Muromets/The Sword and the Dragon - 1956

Absolute beyond the beyond Russian mythic batshittery - operatic, dreamlike, psychedelic, ridiculous, grandiose, poetic, violent, magical, gorgeous, incredible special and in-camera effects, exquisite 3-strip Technicoloresque palette with costumes, sets and scale -100,000 extras! – as only the state-supported coffers of Mosfilm could provide.

 

Will likely only increase your contempt for – and refusal to be swayed by – CGI or shooting on video at all, for that matter.

Writer/director Alexandr Ptushko did it all with puppets, film magic, lighting and complete and utter belief in his complete and utterly deranged mission. Weirdly compelling and irresistable, like being carried along in someone else's dreams. The crude special effects prove convincing, and the scenes using those 100,000 extras raise the art of the possible to the celestial. Those scenes prove the most dreamlike, immersive and incredible, but...

Cultural Note: This is a Rus-adoring product of the barely post-Stalinist Soviet Union. So the heroes and heroines are enormous strapping bob-nosed, blue-eyed Aryans and the invaders they battle are demonic semi-humans, all small and bandy-legged and dark. The worst villain, the lying, cringing, back-stabbing, greedy traitor, has a gigantic fake nose - the only fake-seeming effect in this wonderhouse - walks stooped over and constantly rubs his hands together while whining and complaining: Shylock - pure anti-Semitic caricature and a pure portrait of this picture's time and place.

THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977)

Wim Wenders best films are astonishing hybrids of American energy and European artiness. And this is Wender’s finest, though among his least-known. For the only time in his career, Wenders renounced self-consciousness to serve plot, character and suspense.

Tom Ripley was the misanthropic novelist Patricia Highsmith’s favorite character: she wrote five Ripley novels. Most audiences know only her first, The Talented Mr. Ripley, so most people think of Ripley as a cuddly murderer-by-accident. Not Highsmith. She wrote Ripley as the most dangerous person on Earth, a charming sociopath who always gets away with it. 

Dennis Hopper incarnates Ripley as a stylish, rootless hustler with a gnat's attention span, a vampire's arrogance, a narcissist's easily wounded vanity, and a wolverine' saggressive instincts. This is the performance of Hopper's career, uncharacteristically layered and subtle. 

Confronting Hopper is Bruno Ganz as a self-contained, Old World craftsman seeking a safe life. Hopper confronts his dread by laying waste to everything in his path; Ganz hides from his mortality by creating objects that endure. For all the good it does either one of them....

The 4K restoration is beautiful the new stereo mix of the original mono sountdrack means you can actually understand what most of the characters – including Gerard Blain – are saying.

Samuel Fuller, Jean Eustache and even Satya de la Manitou round out an astonishing supporting cast.

JERRY LEE LEWIS: TROUBLE IN MIND

Jerry Lee was the ne plus ultra of terrifying redneck speed freaks lost in the transcendent sin of rock & roll. Nobody could remotely do what he could do, and he invented a genre that contains only him, yet remains rock ‘n’ roll in its absolutely purest form.

This is the polar opposite of that unbelievable piece of shit Little Richard film. Directed by Ethan Coen and edited by his wife, Tricia Cooke, there’s not one word of narration or voiceover that doesn’t belong to Jerry Lee.

They contextualize Jerry Lee’s impenetrable - and clearly psychopathic - genius through the various incredibly stupid condescending clueless assholes who hosted him on their television shows over the decades.

Jerry Lee’s essence is his pure Jerry Leeness, which defies any attempt at definition. Coen and Cooke recognize that and find the grace in Lee that he was always searching for himself - through performance footage and interview snippets.

Though the film is a compilation of standout moments, there are moments that stand out for me.

One is the awe and reverence in Jerry Lee’s voice as he describes hanging out in a backwoods Louisiana Black juke joint as a young teenager listening to BB King. Jerry Lee says it was like walking in heaven.

The other is one of the favorite musical moments of my life, Jerry Lee, playing guitar and singing I Will Follow with a Black gospel quartet.

There’s nothing in American music like it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubnbBnGHh5A

HICKEY & BOGGS (1972)

In Walter Hill's spare, hardboiled, maximum bleak, screenplay - his best by far - Bill Cosby and director(!) Robert Culp eviscerate the good-guy images they cultivated in their hit TV show I SPY, staying bitter, drunk, resigned to failure and impassive with depression. Cosby's so catatonic he can hardly pick up a pistol, and Culp  laments being  the worst shot in southern California.

So low-key, low-rent LA it equals the vibe of John Flynn's masterpiece, THE OUTFIT. A male hooker gargles with mouthwash after giving Culp a $20 blowjob; Culp's estranged wife, a nude dancer, tells him to "kill himself" after he gets her one last gig. Clup's beat-to-shit '67 lavender T-Bird gets blown up (lotsa cars and one helicopter explode, for reals), he buys another just like it, only with more dents.

Three extraordinary things happen, or maybe it's the same extraordinary thing happening three times: Cosby, Culp and even Vincent Gardenia all understate - and for the entire picture. 

And one more extraordinary thing for a '72 private eye caper: Ted Ashford's soundtrack is understated, too. Not one note of watery Fender Rhodes!

What a cast: Michael Moriarty – wielding a M70 machine gun from a helicopter to provide oblique Vietnam allegory – Tom Signorelli, James Wood, Ed Lauter, and the great, aviator-shades wearing, stone-face wheelman/stunt driver Bill ( FRENCH CONNECtION, BULLITT) Hickman.

Why this hasn't been resurrected or remade, I can't figure. It's on Amazon in widescreen standard def and looks great. Invest the $6.99. You'll thank me..

MAXXXINE

I get the references; where's the movie?