Movies I Watched in July, Part 2

I’d heard great things about “Hunt for the Wilder People,” and as a big fan of writer/director Taika Waititi’s work on “What We Do in the Shadows,” “Thor: Raganarok” and, of course, “Flight of the Conchords,” I figured it might be right up my alley – plus the sort of semi-family friendly film we could watch with the kid. Thankfully, I turned out to be right on all counts. It’s a smart, sharp comedy with just the right dash of serious themes and dark moments, and it had both the slapstick humor and the likeable kid protagonist (played by Julian Dennison) to keep Allie entertained. The plot is suitably simple: Dennison plays Ricky, a troubled foster kid (though, admittedly, not too troubled) who gets placed with Bella and Hec (Rima Te Wiata and Sam Neill), an older couple living near the New Zealand bush. Things happen (that I won’t get into here) and Ricky and Hec flee into the bush, with child services hot on their tail. Soon, the mismatched duo become a national sensation, and Ricky and Hec have to find a way to return to civilization without Ricky getting tossed even deeper into the system. It’s very funny, it moves beautifully, the scenery is magnificent and Dennison and Neill make a truly great screen duo. (Neill is especially good in a role that doesn’t go quite where you think it might.) There are so many terrible comedies out there – especially ones featuring cutesy, insufferable kids. Do yourself a favor and check this one out. And then thank me.


“Paths of Glory” (review here) inspired me to watch some more early Kubrick, so I popped in this film noir, the time-shifting heist pic that put Stanley on the map. It’s still a spectacular, surprising movie, even 66 years after it first his theaters. The cast is stellar, the script is brilliant and the final twist is deliciously nasty, but this time around what I loved most were the locations – the down-market racetrack, the crappy hotels, the vintage airport and especially the parlor where guys could play chess or checkers for 15 cents and hour. I want a whole movie about that joint!


Not to be confused with that dumb Gene Wilder comedy from 1984. This movie, made 49 years earlier, stars Barbara Stanwyck as a horse wrangler who gets involved with a bunch of rich swells, marries one of them, and eventually shows them all up. It’s not one of Stanwyck’s best movies – in fact, it’s not very good at all – but Stanwyck is very good in it. She can’t push the envelope like she does in “Night Nurse” or “Babyface,” which were made a few years earlier before the Production Code put a stop to all the fun (this was made right after), but she has her moments and completely shows up the rest of the comparatively dull cast. There’s one moment, mid-movie, where Stanwyck has a reaction shot that, while simple and easily missed, proves she was playing the game on a different level than anyone else in this movie – and most everyone else in Hollywood, for that matter. As mediocre as “The Woman in Red” is, it finally convinced me that Stanwyck is my favorite actress of all time. Even in a bad movie, she’s top-notch.


Hoo boy. Released about six months before “Duck Soup,” that other insane satire of international politics, this Wheeler and Woolsey romp isn’t nearly as good, but it is almost as jaw-dropping. The boys start the film as barbers on an Indian reservation (the joke being that Native American’s don’t grow facial hair) but are soon sent to Geneva (by the chief!) to represent the tribe at the peace conference. But an arms dealer (played by Louis Calhern, who also starred in “Duck Soup”) wants to stop them from stopping the (profitable) war, which leads to oddball seductions, assassination attempts and other assorted hijinks. It’s all pretty entertainng in a nutty, naughty (pre-Code, this being 1933) way, and if Wheeler and Woolsey’s patented banter isn’t exactly funny, it’s always interesting – and frequently surprising. Plus, this movie is a genuine historical artifact in the sense that it’s packed with racial content you could NEVER get away with today: The tribe at the beginning is (no surprise here) all played by white guys in makeup, and Warner Bros. stalwart Hugh Hubert has a major supporting role as a Chinese fellow named, er, “Chinaman.” But the real jaw-dropper is saved for the end: When a bomb is detonated at the peace conference, all the formerly white characters (including our two heroes) are instantly converted to blackface, and a big musical number commences, “Are You Ready for the Judgement Day.” It’s offensive, sure, on any number of levels, but as I watched I couldn’t help but wonder how much insane effort went into this scene – the women are sporting black body paint, too. It’s beyond crazy, and a great example of what the good ol’ days were really like sometimes.

Up next: Two more Stanwycks and the goofiest modern movie I've seen in a while