2025 Modular Film Festival, part 3

Fourth and final post in the 2025 Modular Film Festival series. We begin with day 25 here.

25. A movie 85 minutes long or less
    A Doctor's Sword (2015)

    A quick 68 minutes documentary going back to Japan. Aiden MacCarthy was Irish doctor in the Royal Air Force during WWII. By sheer bad luck, he was a prisoner of war in a camp outside Nagasaki. But he had the good luck to be in an underground bomb shelter on the 9th of August 1945. In the aftermath Dr MacCarthy treated both POWs and the Japanese.

26. Silent film (no audible dialogue) from after 1927
    Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928)

    Just barely past 1927, but I like Buster Keaton and hadn't seen this one.

    It may have been the impetus for "Steamboat Willie" (1928), the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. However the stories are completely different and there's a song ("Steamboat Bill", 1910) they could both be referencing.

    This one is a little slow until Keaton's stunts become the focus in the third act.

27. A Western
    Hell or High Water (2016)

    A neo-Western where the bank robbers are out for justice, the bystanders believe in shooting to kill, and the rangers move slowly and insult each other. And the bank? The bank is after money, of course.

    Excellent acting all around, the two thieves and the two rangers are distinct characters, even if one ranger gets a small part.

    Four branches of Texas Midlands Bank out of five.

28. A movie with practical monsters or creatures
    Jason And The Argonauts (1963)

    Practical effects for creatures and monsters just calls out for Ray Harryhausen. I had seen this film before, but not in several decades.

    Battling a giant statue come to life: check.
    Saved from crumbling rocks by a sea god: check
    Sword fight against a band of skeleton soldiers: check.
    Plus plenty of lessor events.

    And the story's not half bad.

29. A movie based on a comic but not a superhero movie
    30 Days of Night (2007)

    Barrow, Alaska, (changed to Utqiagvik in 2016, but a fictional version anyway[*]) is the farthest north Alaska gets, and has a midnight sun in the summer and no sun at all in winter. A group of vampires decides to take advantage of the night.

    Starts fine, but is a mess by the end.

    [*] Among other problems: Utqiagvik has ~66 days without a sunrise and while Prudhoe Bay is the town with the oil pipeline.

30. The last (or latest) film in a franchise
    Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

    Finally finished this series.

    These just get more progressively ridiculous without reaching Fast and Furious outlandish. Plus as I age I see more and more "the lone man who can save everything" is a specifically fascist fantasy.

    Fun thought: maybe Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt had a mortal wound along the way and the rest was a "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" moment-of-death-dream.

So what did I like best about this "festival"?

It spurred me to watch some films I might have never watched (But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), The League of Gentlemen (1960), and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)) or would have put off watching for a long time (The Iron Giant (1999), Taxi Tehran (2015), and La Jetée (1962)).

Four of those are very worthwhile of your time and other two are worth a watch.

There were some stinkers in the lot, but some of the prompts were seemingly aimed at being stinkers ("A movie that seems fake on Tubi"). Of course, differing tastes always mean someone's good is someone else's bad.

A few had been near the top of my queue and I just worked them into the prompts. Notably Hell or High Water (2016), California Split (1974), and Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928).

I have definite tastes in films, but I do try to deviate from that to see stuff from all eras and genres. This has been an exercise in flexing that diversity.

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.