Huh. The names attached to this movie… Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, Truman Capote… And I don’t remember hearing about this movie before? Is this one of those late-career white elephant kind of movies?

The cinematography is very post-Vittorio de Sica.

I’m not quite sure whether this is supposed to be a broad comedy or, like, a serious drama/heist movie?

I mean…

But I think perhaps Huston is going for a British comedy kind of thing? That is, “satire”, i.e., “not actually funny”?

I wonder what “colorist Sheri Eisenberg” did on this restoration, though.

John Huston has directed so many classics that it’s hard to grasp that the movie you’re watching might be a total dud.

I’m starting to think that this is.

Yeah, but that’s what a satire is… But it’s true — there’s no jokes here (that land).

This is starting to get excruciating.

The cinematographer is amusing himself, at least.

Ah, now it makes more sense:

“Beat the Devil” went straight from box office flop to cult classic and has been called the first camp movie, although Bogart, who sank his own money into it, said, “Only phonies like it.” It’s a movie that was made up on the spot; Huston tore up the original screenplay on the first day of filming, flew the young Truman Capote to Ravallo, Italy, to crank out new scenes against a daily deadline and allowed his supporting stars, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, to create dialogue for their own characters.

But the cinematographer didn’t always choose the right lens for the scene.

At first, I thought this was a ⚂ movie… and then I was so bored that I was going to go with ⚁… but it’s bad. It’s really bad.

Beat the Devil. John Huston. 1953. ⚀

That hat isn’t ideal for his head shape.

Anyway, I’m watching this because somebody said that it was unexpectedly hilarious… and it is indeed pretty funny. It’s quite old fashioned — you could almost see Schwarzenegger do this movie in 1992.

But it does constantly skirt eww territories which those movies steered clear of.

And now they’re doing a training montage. This is where you can go all overboard with funny stuff, but instead it’s like… amusing, but they could have turned it up a few notches?

Ah yeah, the director started off doing a Naked Gun sequel, and has continued doing silly movies. And this movie is exactly what you’d expect — but it’s good. I laughed out loud several times, especially during the last 20 minutes.

But this is not a future cult classic, I think. It’s kinda uneven tonally? And there’s so many scenes that could easily have been hilarious instead of just amusing. But still. It’s fun.

My Spy. Peter Segal. 2020. ⚄

I haven’t seen any of Godard’s post-60s movies…

So it looks like this is going to be a bunch of short bits from movies and news reports with extremely high contrast and offbeat chroma?

Which I’m on board for.

Eh… the subtitles in this movie are kinda random.

Murder?!

There’s a sentence you don’t see every day.

The English subtitles on this one are weird. But I quite liked the movie? Especially towards the end? I kinda wanna go with a ⚄, but let’s be realistic.

The Image Book. Jean-Luc Godard. 2018. ⚃