Last year, I watched a couple of classic Howard Hawks movies, and I thought “well, I’ve gotta watch them all”. And… when it gets to the 60s, these are movies I’ve never heard of before:

So this is one of them. I was only able to find this bluray in a Spanish edition, but it’s got an English sound-track, too.

But… I’m guessing this isn’t one of them there Howard Hawks classics.

Ah, James Caan… he was one of the biggest stars for a while, but I think he’s basically been forgotten now?

Er… I’m not even sure that’s him…

Man! She went to bed without removing the makeup!?

What happened! This is really bad! It’s written and directed by Hawks, but it seems totally amateurish — the shots are incomprehensively awkward, and it’s been super duper boring so far.

Hawks:

“To be serious I think there were some pretty good things in it but as a piece of entertainment I don’t think I did a good job. I think there were some individual scenes that were pretty good and there were a lot of great race scenes. But I’m not proud of the picture as a whole.”

Caan later called the film “a joke”.

People like it less than the critics (but there’s only six reviews).

It’s Sulu!

Man, this is so weird. Not just the boring plot and stuff, but just on a scene to scene basis — they splice in still photos showing what they’re watching, for instance, so it looks like a parody of a movie. (They couldn’t afford shooting the reverse?)

Nobody likes this movie — I think that’s the lowest rating Hawks has on any movie?

OK, I’m bailing. It’s rare that I bail on movies, but this is just dire. It’s amazing that somebody who made Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Big Sleep made something as awful as this.

Red Line 7000. Howard Hawks. 1965. ☐

For a Godzilla movie, this has a lot of drama about surviving in Japan after WWII…

I understand the enthusiasm this movie had, because it’s like… a real movie? It’s not like those annoying American Godzilla movies? But… it’s hampered by the a low budget, I think. I mean, this looks better than most $200M American super-hero/monster movies, but it still doesn’t look, like, actually good.

Overbite Godzilla.

It’s not the special effects that show the lack of money the most — it’s the action scenes, where there’s supposed to be hundreds of extras running around, getting chomped, but instead there’s like four.

It’s a 99%/98% tomatometer — is that unprecedented?

OK, I wasn’t expecting them to fridge the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to motivate The Failed Kamikaze Pilot to Actually Do Something, and that’s on me — it was pretty obvious that that’s where this was going from the start.

I understand the enthusiasm for this movie. It’s a scrappy little movie that hits all the right notes. It’s quite moving, and it feels like the stakes are on the right level, and the action scenes are really effective — and all those things are things that US action movies usually fail at.

But.

There’s like an hour in the middle there that’s really (content warning: hate speech) boring. Sorry! It’s boring!

The fun parts are really fun, through, and it tugs at all the heart strings in a very effective (i.e. manipulative) way. So… it’s the movie for 2023? But is anybody gonna watch this in the years to come? Dunno.

Godzilla Minus One. Takashi Yamazaki. 2023. ⚂

I’ve never seen this movie before, but I’ve seen the name mentioned en passant a gazillion names. Like an example of 70s filmmaking? I’m not sure. But it finally occurred to me to just buy the bluray, so now I’m watching it.

Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen any of Hal Ashby’s movies, but again, the name is so familiar.

That’s an odd-looking kid, so I wondered how whether he was supposed to be 12 or 22, but the actor turns out to be 23…

Ah ok, Maude is the Magic Pixie Dream Granny. I’m guessing she’s going to die, but the kid is going to experience Character Growth.

That’s Maude.

It’s radical to cast an older woman to play an older woman — that still doesn’t happen a lot.

Interesting wall treatment….

I like this. It’s very… 1971.

Very big.

Oops, I think we entered the third act.

I want a hallway with pictures like that!

I have never been so sad to see a plot development that I predicted at the start come to pass. Because I really, really enjoyed this movie, and I’m so disappointed that it had to end on such a cliché.

Anyway. Perhaps I should sample some of the other Hal Ashby movies anyway?

And I think the trope of the old, funny woman who represents anarchy and disregard for laws and propriety has largely disappeared? Growing up, it seemed like this — the cheeky grandmother — was a character that appeared all the time? But I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these characters…

Harold & Maude. Hal Ashby. 1971. ⚄