Movies I Watched in November, Part 1

Once again pushing right up against the limits of "better late then never," here's part one (of three, believe it or not) of my recap of the movies I watched in November...


Interesting, low-key (and low-budget) documentary about the comic book scare of the 1950s, which led to the development of the (now defunct) Comics Code Authority. I knew pretty much all of this stuff already, having read David Hadju’s excellent “The Ten-Cent Plague” and other histories of the era, but it’s a fascinating subject and always worth revisiting. Two things people always forget: One, the Comics Code wasn’t government censorship – it was industry self-censorship provoked by (a) fear of possible government censorship and (b) a desire to thin the herd a bit by getting rid of some of the smaller publishers (including the late, great E.C. Comics. And two, Frederic Wertham, who started the whole mess, was a dedicated, lifelong liberal and not some censorship-happy conservative.

I’m not sure why I never watched this Roger Corman Poe adaptation before, but TCM (bless their hearts) ran it during Halloween and I finally caught what’s definitely Corman’s best Poe movie – and one of his best movies, period. Blessed with bee-yoo-ti-ful cinematography courtesy of the great Nicolas Roeg, “Masque” is a riot of colors, with the costume balls thrown by evil Prince Prospero (Vincent Price, at the top of his game) looking especially good. Roeg and production designer Daniel Haller also color-coordinate rooms of the castle in a striking way that predates a similar effect in Peter Greenaways’ “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Love” by a few decades. Best of all, “Masque of the Red Death” isn’t just a visual feast – it’s a dark, ominous movie about plague, decadence and the power of evil. It’s genuinely creepy in the best possible way.

I’ve written about this one several times in these blog postings, and it’s great. Holds up to repeated viewings, manages to be hilarious, suspenseful and heartbreaking, and I maintain that sequence when the toys face death in the scrap yard ranks among the best movie scenes of the 21st century.

Allie’s been crazy about Greek myths lately, so we watched this 1997 movie, which came at the end of the 1990s Disney renaissance and just as Pixar was starting to take over screen animation. It’s not bad, not exactly, but it showcases all the worst excesses of that particular Disney formular: celebrity voices, “hip” references and endless, pointless musical numbers. I mean, as a decades-long Letterman fan, I love Paul Shaffer, but having Hermes not only act like him but look like him, too, makes no sense, story-wise. Also, as Meg, Susan Egan is so bored-with-life and seen-it-all that you can’t believe any man would fall in love with her, much less Hercules, the sort of guy who could get any woman in the world. Allie liked it more than me, but her favorite movie remains the 1981 “Clash of the Titans,” which makes me deliriously happy. Next we need to check out that 2015 "Hercules" starring the Rock and Ian McShane, which got surprisingly good reviews. 

Interesting documentary about Tim Jenison, a wealthy tech inventor who spends the kind of money and time you and I can only dream about studying – and eventually replicating – the painting techniques of Dutch master Jonannes Vermeer. If you’re fascinated by the artistic process – like me – you’ll want to check this one out, if only to see how Jenison takes something that seems unexplainable and unreproducible (Vermeer’s painting style) and figures out how it was done. (Spoiler alert: It involves mirrors and patience.) The whole reveal-the-secret-behind-the-magic theme of the film makes sense when you realize it was directed by Teller (as in “Penn and…”) and written by both of them. Penn shows up onscreen, of course, but the highlight of the movie comes when actor Martin Mull  shows up to watch Jenison’s technique. Jenison tells Mull that he was delayed because it took him a half an hour “to learn how to operate a paintbrush,” and Mull (no slouch as an artist himself) replies “Good for you. It took me 40 years.”
Up next: Not one but two (two!) theatrical releases, including a science fiction epic.