Neptune’s Daughter. Edward Buzzell. 1949. ⚃

Hey! Esther Williams and Red Skelton! Two actors I don’t really have on my radar, but I think I’ve seen them both in movies recently? Skelton was pretty funny?

[twenty minutes pass]

This is very odd. There’s barely been any swimming: It’s all been Skelton and Betty Garrett trying very hard to seduce each other in their nerdy ways.

It’s quite funny, but really odd. Is this a fixer-upper movie? Edited together from a few short movies or something?

[twenty minutes pass]

Now they’re doing the Baby It’s Cold Outside song. Did that originate here? It’s not like I remember it? I mean, Ricardo Montalban is doing one of the parts, and I don’t remember that.

And… “Say, what’s in this drink?” That’s probably always been there, but makes it even rape-ier than I remembered!

This is the original version:

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is a popular song written by Frank Loesser in 1944 and introduced to the public in the 1949 film Neptune’s Daughter.

Oh! But then Red Skelton and Betty Garrett do some verses where Skelton tries to make Garrett leave! I didn’t remember that, either. “You really can’t stay / Baby it’s cold outside.”

[forty minutes pass]

It’s an odd movie. There’s a bunch of funny pieces in here, but, like why:

Why paint that poor horse’s forehead white? It just looks odd.

Speaking of which, the colour process used here is an early one, I guess, and it’s quite striking: Some things look very colourful indeed, while the not-so-colourful bits all look beige.

[the end]

It’s an odd movie… which I like! But it doesn’t fire on all cylinders. And there’s not enough swimming! The final scene is lovely, though.

Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Cathy Yan. 2020. ⚂

[twenty minutes pass]

Hey! I thought this was supposed to be awful? Am I getting this confused with something else? It’s… it’s very modern, what with all the meta and skipping back and forth and the visual overload. So totally the opposite of all the other DC super-hero movies.

Oh! People liked it?

It didn’t do great at the box office, but it probably didn’t lose money, either…

[an hour passes]

Well, the fun sorta evaporated. We keep getting all these backstories… Actually, the way we get the backstories are fun. But the stories themselves mostly drag. Draaaag. It feels like I’ve watched a couple of hours of this, and…

It’s just got massive pacing problems. The fun scenes are fun, but there’s too many scenes in between with no zip.

[the end]

It’s a bit frustrating: The movie has good bones, basically. The concept is good, the storytelling structure is entertaining, the performances are charming, there’s a number of funny lines in here… but it’s like it’s just badly edited. They frequently find it necessary to over-explain bits that we don’t really need to know, and that makes it drag here and there. And in a movie like this, it doesn’t take much to get distracted and lose interest.

Night Games. Mai Zetterling. 1966. ⚃

I don’t think the plot recap at imdb can be improved upon :

Jan (Keve Hjelm) grooved up in an over class environment and with a strong attachment to his egocentric and cold-hearted mother Irene (Ingrid Thulin).

I mean, that’s just perfection.

[twenty minutes pass]

Wow, this is something else. I had expected more Bergmanesque stuff after Zetterling’s first movie, but this is definitely not that.

The first wild scenes made me think of Pasolini, and not the fun Pasolini, but this movie is made almost a decade before Pasolini’s stuff? So it’s… Fellini, but as nightmare. Kinda.

So I had to pause the movie just to Google “well what did people at the time think”:

The film premiered at the 27th Venice International Film Festival where it was considered so controversial that it was shown to the jury in private. The film was also the cause of former child-star Shirley Temple’s resignation from the San Francisco International Film Festival. Temple denounced the film as “pornography for profit” and was against it being shown at the festival.

The cinematography is very striking, and the way it glides between the present and the past is masterful.

*unpause*

[forty minutes pass]

Well! This must have been challenging for the actors… I don’t think anybody would have shot anything like this today. I almost understand Shirley Temple.

[the end]

Well!

It’s so ahead of its time. But it’s hard to really like: It’s set in such a creepy milieu… It’s like “yes, being super-duper incredibly rich sure is hard”…

I don’t know. I’m also super drunk.

Anyway, the performances are incredible. Lena Brundin in particular, but just about everybody… except the lead, who’s a bit of a non-entity (Keve Hjelm). And… Oh! Yeah! Naima Wifstrand as the batty aunt! Fantastic!

And the cinematography! Amazeballs!

It’s a unique movie, but I’m not sure it’s something I’d recommend watching.