2025 Modular Film Festival, part 3

Third post about watching films following the rules of the 2025 Modular Film Festival. Continuing at entry sixteen.

16. A movie from South America
    Central do Brasil (1998)

    I liked everything about this movie except the main characters. It takes a tour from Rio to backwater Brazil with a cynical old woman trying to find the father of a boy whose mother has just died. The places they go are a delight to see and the people they meet are fascinating.

    Too bad the woman is so broken and the boy so obstinate. Four bus, truck, and train rides out of six.

17. A director's least popular feature-length movie
    The Swarm (1978)

    4.5 at IMDB, a failure among Irwin Allen's string of disaster movies of the 1970s (eg "Poseidon Adventure" (1972) and "Towering Inferno" (1974)). The others he just produced, this one he directed and produced.

    "African" Killer Bees are swarming and killing hundreds. The response includes using flame throwers against the bees — indoors. Houston, we have a problem. (It even is Houston facing the peril.)

18. Watched by JFK at the White House
    The League of Gentlemen (1960)

    He's assembled a team for a heist, now he has to convince them to work with him and make the job run smoothly. Standard fare and I've seen it a dozen times before, but I do have to wonder how much of this was novel when it came out. The car hidden in a truck thing was famously used in The Italian Job (1969) but that's also almost a decade later. A remake was announced just a couple of weeks ago.

19. A movie you haven't seen with over 1 million views on letterboxd
    The Iron Giant (1999)

    I had seen a few minutes of this before, but certainly not the whole thing. This is a kids story with some predictable emotional manipulation, but there's a ton of fascinating detail. Starting with the source book being written by Sylvia Plath's widower for their kids after her suicide and including naming the kid after Tarzan illustrator Burne Hogarth.

20. Musical not in English
    The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

    Candy colored melodrama, sung-through rather than the usual talking plus songs. There were a few witty bits: "I'm pregnant." / "That's terrible. How could this happen?" / "The usual way I assure you." And very pretty to look at.

    The all-singing formula makes it feel more artificial than most films. I was also struck how neither suitor for Geneviève seems to own an umbrella. No wonder the shop is in trouble.

21. A movie directed by an Iranian director
    Taxi Tehran (2015)

    The only day where mine is also the source festival sample title.

    Taxi drivers in Tehran seem to see a lot. "Some paper so I can write down my will!"
    All the coincidences in this film, taking place in a single day in a single taxi, have me convinced it is fiction, but style is complete cinéma vérité with multiple acknowledged cameras and people talking to the director by name.
    Five passengers out of five

22. A Hamlet
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990)

    Fun fact: the year this came out I read both the play and the screenplay before watching it.

    I haven't watched it since and remembered only the coin tossing and some bits with acting troupe. But my daughter watched it over the summer and spoke of it, so it was on my mind. The reflexiveness of the story makes an interesting pairing with yesterday's self-aware "Taxi Tehran".

23. A movie screened at the 2022 Milwaukee Film Festival
    Watcher (2022)

    Effective psychological horror / thriller using a language barrier, loneliness, and culture differences to keep the watcher on edge. Julia has followed her husband to Romania following a job promotion of his. He can speak the language but works long hours and she has no one. But maybe someone is watching her. Is it the serial killer or just a lonely man? Or her imagination?

24. A documentary about a niche interest or subculture
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

    Filmed when Jiro Ono was 85, this is as much about achieving perfection in sushi craftmanship (a niche interest for sure) as it about Jiro's son waiting in the wings to replace his father at the restaurant. (Jiro ultimately retired in 2023 and will turn 100 a few days before Halloween this year.) The sushi was gorgeous but didn't make me hungry.

    Seven decades out of a century

2025 Modular Film Festival, part 2

Continuing my watch of films following the rules of the 2025 Modular Film Festival. Eight in the first post, seven more here.

9. A movie in the Kentucky Laserdisc Preservation Society archive
   Grosse Point Blank (1997)

   I had been thinking about rewatching this for a few months, and used this as impetus. I feel like I take a look at so many action film synopses and see "A hired assassin..." then I stop reading because it just seems lazy scriptwriting.

   Good hired assassin films exist, but it's also a crutch for the uncreative.

   Here it's "Reluctant high school reunion for a hired assassin"

10. A movie that's been in your watchlist too long
    Good Bye, Lenin! (2003)

    So basically "free choice" day.

    I read reviews of this film when it came out and mentally noted it down. Fast forward to watching it, I was again reminded: humor from covering up lies doesn't amuse me much (same issue I had with Safety Last).

    I liked parts here but not enough to keep me focused the whole way through. Seeing people live through the reunification of Germany was interesting.

11. Shot on 16mm
    Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

    This is a very effective slasher steeped in Catholicism, the first murder occuring in a church just as a group of girls receive their first communion. (Originally the title was "Communion.")

    Alfred Sole, the director, had been formally excommunicated for a previous film and seems to hold a grudge.

    Brook Shields' has a minor part as Alice's sister in her first film role.

    Five roaches in a jar out of five.

12. A movie never released on Blu Ray
    California Split (1974)

    Music licensing seems to have interfered with home media releases of this. It's a very high energy film, with the loud brash energy of the gambling addict.

    I found it difficult to watch, gambling being so irrational to me. And all the loudness of someone trying to prove themselves coming across unpleasantly.

    But I never doubted their gambling need. Four dwarf names of the seven.

13. A movie directed by an LGBTQ+ filmmaker
    Breaking the Girls (2013)

    This variant on Strangers on a Train (1951) is from the same director as my day 4 choice: But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), Jamie Babbit. I really liked that one and was hoping for similar here but I didn't find it as engaging as her earlier film.

    This story has a few twists not in Strangers and a whole lot more lesbian love than Cheerleader.

    Three taxidermied animals out of six.

14. A movie directed by an Indigenous filmmaker
    Blood Quantum (2019)

    I watched Top End Wedding (2019) this month and it would have qualified for this category, but why not stick to my continent?

    The title references native classification laws for mixed race people. The story uses a zombie outbreak that the indigenous are immune from to put the discrimination on the other foot. Rightful ownership, "speak English," and generational trauma themes fill it out.

15. A movie directed by a non-white non-male-identifying person
    A Dry White Season (1989)

    This film is the first major Hollywood production directed by a black woman: Euzhan Palcy of Martinique.

    The story takes place in 1976 but the film is clearly late eighties as the world was turning on South Africa for its apartheid laws. Here one white man gets his eyes opened while so many around him, including family, "just want things to stay the same."

2025 Modular Film Festival

So this year I have decided to try the "Modular Film Festival" which is a series of prompts for movies to watch, one per day of September. The 2025 list was shared as a letterboxd user list. I was thinking about posting this as weekly updates, but September doesn't neatly divide by seven, so I'll mix it up a bit. Eight films in the first installment.

1. A movie that nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie
   RKO-281 (1999)

   For me, that other film about making Citizen Kane : RKO 281 (1999).

   Mank is a minor character in this one. The focus is mostly on Welles and some on Hearst, and a lot on the pressure exerted to suppress the film.

   50 takes of a line out of 60

2. A French New Wave Movie
   La Jetée (1962)

   A little bit of a stretch since it's a short, but it's in 1001 Movies You Must Watch so I don't feel bad about the length. Jetée, like Savage Eye (1959, but I watched last week), breaks rules about how films are made. This is a slide show with audio and a single motion clip, yet it is pretty effective. The story subject helps make it work. (Terry Gilliam remade this as Twelve Monkeys; "remade" used loosely.)

3. A movie that seems fake on Tubi
   The Machine Girl (2008)

   I watched a Bionic Man/Woman film last month, so the title lured me in. Japanese schoolgirl films are something I don't watch normally.

   This enhanced young woman on a revenge mission makes the new "Toxic Avenger" seem sedate and plausible. Two minutes to first geyser of blood. Curiously there are no blood waterfalls when people get holes through torsos. That's probably all you need to know.

4. God forbid women have hobbies
   But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)

   Hobbies. That's a hard one. Jobs? Hopes and dreams? Sure. Cheerleading sounds like a hobby, so time to watch this one.

   As yesterday, not my usual tastes: I tend to leave teen lesbian stories out of my film watching.

   Unlike yesterday, this was a lot a of fun, and very carefully styled. Would look for more like this. The sexuality was rather mild, as noted in This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)

5. A movie at least 100 years old
   Safety Last (1923)

   I've been meaning to watch this for a while, I've viewed and enjoyed a bunch of other silents in the past few years. I found most of the first hour a bit tedious, humor derived from awkwardly covering up lies just isn't that funny. The building climb, with clock scene, in the last twenty minutes is the good part. (Buster Keaton's antics are better for my money.)

6. A Wallace Shawn movie
   Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989) Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989)

   Having seen both "My Dinner with Andre" (1981) and "Princess Bride" (1987) too recently to repeat, I picked a Paul Bartel film I had not watched.

   Shawn here has the role Bartel usually saves for himself: husband to Mary Woronov. Fun absurdist comedy about class, akin to "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972).

   Four castration themed pick-up lines out of four.

7. A movie Roger Ebert gave one star or less
   The Green Hornet (2011)

   I remember reading reviews of this when it was new, and remembering liking the trailer. It's really dumb, seemingly existing to answer the question "What if Batman were very stupid?" Unfortunately that drags down pretty much the whole film (while leaving enough contextless scenes for a trailer).

   Except for Christoph Waltz. I liked him, he does a good job generally with funny bad guy.

8. A movie shot in Luxembourg
   Hysteria (2011)

   This is a period rom-com hung on a largely fabricated story about inventing the vibrator by a doctor specializing in the malady "hysteria." Much "humor" is based on the medical ideas of period. Much drama comes from the well-off not caring about the poor.

   Luxembourg fills in for Victorian London. City scenes and sets were fine, perhaps heavy handed with the advertising, but the costumes did not all seem era appropriate.

Thoughts on a Pair of Eighties Films

I was in high school student in the 1980s. I was a good student and I went on the school trips to various cities for both educational visits and for college tours. There would be maybe one or two chaperones per ten kids and we'd stay in hotel rooms with four kids in a room.

During one of these trips, one of my roommates figured out that the hotel TV got the Playboy Channel. No one objected, but I was secretly concerned about the viewing showing up on the bill. Anyway, so we watched what that channel had to show that night. And what it had to show, when we tuned in, was Joysticks (1983) (at imdb) (at wikipedia).

I remember thinking it was a terrible film.

Fast forward a few decades, and I'm watching or rewatching a lot of 1970s and 1980s films. During this I come across Hardbodies (1984) (at imdb) (at wikipedia) and I watch it about a month ago.

It is, uh, not good. It's an improbable T&A fest at recognizable beach areas of Los Angeles. A newly homeless kid finds an opportunity to teach some newly single guys his dad's age about how to score with the modern youths. Until he decides they're not cool. But here is some interesting (and again improbable) home automation in one bedroom set. I found that bit amusing.

Teal Roberts, playing Kristi, demonstrates how this unusual bed headboard has controls for the blinds, the lights, the wave action waterbed, the disco ball, etc. Strangely the radio buttons don't control a radio or other music.

But in my usual style, after I watched it, I read about it. (Imagine one of those good / bad idea memes: "Learn about the film before watching it? Nah. After, Yes.") Wikipedia has this little note about Hardbodies:

An initial plan to sell the film for broadcast on the Playboy Channel fell through when, according to [producer Jeff] Begun, the network found it "too soft." Instead, Columbia picked it up for theatrical distribution.

Now I'm thinking about Joysticks again. I can't find it again, but I did once read a review of this film that called it "an attempt at a T&A spectacular that doesn't have enough T&A" or words to that effect. How does Joysticks get on Playboy Channel when Hardbodies was "too soft"?

So I re-watched Joysticks. There's a lot of nudity by 2020s standards, but maybe not a lot by "raunchy eighties comedy" standards, and much of the skin is front loaded, leaving a cringe comedy kids vs adults conflict you've seen it a thousand times to fill out the movie. The writer and/or director has clearly watched Animal House (1978) and made a checklist of things they want to include, not the least of which is a fat slob sort-of hero character climbing a ladder to get to an upper floor bedroom window. But to make it different, this time it's the bedroom window for the chief villian of the film, where his wife is totally zonked out on sleeping pills. (Her sexuality and her husband's disinterest are played for laughs. Cringe laughs.)

The video game aspects of Joysticks are okay. There's a bunch of clips of games clearly just a few seconds into game play. But we do meet the fat slob character as he's trying to break a million in Pac-Man, with game play. Later there's some "Super Pac-Man" (which you don't see often), a backroom game of "strip video" with "Streaking", and "Satan's Hollow" which the film makers managed to get pre-release for showcasing.

Overall, Hardbodies seems more of a Playboy offering than Joysticks, and I think my high school assessment of it as crap holds up okay. So why? My only guess is that Playboy Channel was just willing to put raunchy theatrical films on during evening prime time, but didn't want that stuff actually endorsed as "Playboy" branded.

A final note. No one ever mentioned anything about a Playboy Channel item on the bill. I don't know if we got away with it because of a glitch, because no one looked closely at the bill, or because whoever looked at it didn't want to touch that issue. I don't think I have watched Playboy Channel since then, the quality of the entertainment was not that appealing.