Turner's Picture Palace: July 2024

I watch way too many movies. Each month for the last year or so, I've shared my favorite new watches in list form with a few friends. This month I turned it into a "movie notes" thing. Next thing you know, I decide it's a new monthly column for Paperback Zero. Why not? Let's go:

Hitmen and Hitgirls (revisited) -- Somehow watched four movies this month about hitmen: (ranked) LaRoy, Texas (2023); Looper (2012); The Outside Man (1972); and Hit Man (2023). Loved the hell out of LaRoy, Texas, which I wish I had caught in a theater. It reminded me of ‘90s neo-noir movies like Red Rock West (1993, also about a person accidentally stealing a hitman gig and the real hitman being an unhappy camper), Clay Pigeons (1998), and U-Turn (1997). Steve Zahn adds high hoot. As usual, the French are noir hip: LaRoy, Texas was the Grand Special Prize winner at the 2023 Deauville Film Festival. Oui, oui. The Outside Man, in fact, is directed by a Frenchman, Jacques Deray, but set delightfully in early ‘70s LA. I could probably switch my ranking order between any of the top 3, but Linklater’s Hit Man was definitely last. It was a light romantic comedy that I found mostly un-charming and sitcom-like. Honestly, I would also place the crazy, sleazy high school hitgirl movie I saw in May, Malibu High (1979), above it.

The American Nightmare -- I had a very special double feature over the July 4 holiday from 1975: Day of the Locust (first time watching) and Nashville. I got the idea because the two movies played together in drive-ins when they were released, which I know first-hand now had to make for a long, odd bummer of a night (but in a good way!). The two movies include politics, country music, assassination attempts, riots, and the late Donald Sutherland stomping a bratty child to death. I followed these tender takes at America a few weeks later with another look at the good ol’ USA and our capitalistic life plans: Seconds (1966). Former Miss Bay View (Milwaukee) at the South Shore Frolics (which croaked a few years back, iced by high prices and hipsters), Salome Jens gets buck nekkid during an unforgettable hippie wine festival ceremony that was a real event filmed for the movie that involved cinematographer James Wong Howe supposedly using seven handheld cameras (and winning an Academy Award in the process). Jens, a Bay View High graduate, offers this lovely quote about l-i-v-i-n’ in Milwaukee: "the only time I can imagine contemplating suicide would be if I was told that I had to go back and live in Milwaukee forever."

Black(and white)out: After the real-life assassination attempt on a populist creep, combined with another birthday, and general country shittery, I decided to watch mostly black-and-white movies from mid-month on. Some of my favorites: The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), The Chase (1946), Street Scene (1931), Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and fuck yeah, Sam Fuller’s Underworld, U.S.A. (1961). 

My favorite was probably Out of the Fog (1941), which also features the camerawork of Howe, who gives us all sorts of foggy fun. It’s an early noir that features two immigrant friends who just want to fish and buy a better boat but fucking John Garfield, a true prick in this, wants to bully them, steal their money, and nail the one’s guy daughter, played nail-rifically (see top photo) by Ida Lupino. Excellent dialogue in this, including, “In America, any man can be a king on the installment plan.”  

And this bit of “g” dropping, American Dreaminess delivered by good guy Eddie Albert to Ida Lupino, after she starts itchin’ for John Garfield: “Just doin’ the simple things – takin’ a walk on the boardwalk on a Sunday afternoon, watchin’ the people and the ocean. I could get a real kick outta just watchin’ you put on a new dress. It’s inside of you, Stella, with your heart spillin’ over with love for the things you’ve got, that you can hold on to forever; that’s where you’ll find what you’re lookin’ for.”  

At the Movies: During the pandemic, as movie theaters began to close, I made it a goal to go to theaters more frequently. Around 2020, I also read a New York Times article that predicted technology in 2040 (which I now can’t find) that portrayed a theater-less future. Including July, I’ve gone to 63 movies in theaters since I began tagging them on Letterboxd in 2022. To further encourage my theatergoing, but also to watch more newer movies, I purchased an AMC A-List membership in July, which lets me watch up to three movies a week for $20 a month. I made it to six movies in July, and I enjoyed them all honestly, but my favorites were probably Kill (2023) and Oddity (2024). Kill was bloody as hell, but poetically so (especially the title sequence, which comes about 30 minutes into the movie!) in a way that Sam Peckinpah would have probably loved or cursed at. Oddity was much more subtle but was creepy and fun and reminded me a little (but on a much lower budget) of The Lair of the White Worm (1988), which Roger Ebert compared to Roger Corman Poe's movies, which probably explains why I liked Oddity so much!

Yesterday's Newspaper is Dead:  From an 1975 interview with director John Schlesinger by Tom Shales of the Washington Post upon the release of The Day of the Locust: "Schlesinger talked about putting 'the reality of the place' on film and then admits that the phrase is a contradiction in terms. The reality of Hollywood? Throughout the film the characters turn their backs on reality. They walk out of the movie theater when the newsreel comes on. 'But that’s true of everyone, today as well,' says Schlesinger. 'The quicker the means of communication, the quicker the news is forgotten. People watch television, they hear about the horrors of Vietnam, then a baby cries or whatever and they leave the room or look away and it is forgotten. Yesterday’s newspaper is dead, no matter how real and appalling its news was. That’s always the way.'"

*All photos from IMDB