Hello and welcome once again to Five Cool Things, the bi-weekly post where I talk about all the interesting and cool things I’ve come across since the last time. This week we’ve got Spike Lee remaking a classic Kurosawa movie, a new Apple+ murder mystery with science fiction undertones, a couple of crazy nunsploitation flicks from the Criterion Channel, the first true Brian De Palma picture, and a memorial to one of the last classic movie stars.
Highest 2 Lowest
When I learned Spike Lee was remaking Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, I was all kinds of excited. Kurosawa is a Top 5 director for me, and that film is one of his best. I’m not quite as big of a fan of Spike Lee, but when he’s good, he’s pretty damn great (and he’s often very good).
Buy High and Low (Criterion Collection) 4K UHDHigh and Low is based on an Ed McBain novel. It follows a shoe executive (played to perfection by Toshiro Mifune) who is in the middle of a deal that will win him back control of the company. He is an ethical man, and he’s grown tired of the company trading its high quality for an increasingly shoddy product in order to make a few more bucks. He’s willing to invest everything to make this deal.
Just as it’s going through, he gets a phone call. Someone has kidnapped his son and demands a high ransom. Of course he’ll pay. That deal will just have to wait. But then he discovers the kidnapper got the wrong kid. He’s taken the chauffeur’s son. That makes things different. Kurosawa pulls a lot of drama out of that decision – will the executive pay the ransom and risk everything on a child who is not his? Then he shifts it into a really wonderful, suspenseful, crime drama.
But this isn’t about High and Low; it is about Spike Lee’s remake. Highest 2 Lowest is definitely not as good as the Kurosawa film, but it is interesting. Lee has updated the setting and moved it to New York. Denzel Washington plays David King, a music mogul whose artist dominated the charts in the 1990s and 2000s. But the business has changed. Now it is all about social media and branding. They used to say King had the best ears in the business. He spent his time listening to new artists and finding the standouts. But now he mostly crunches numbers and cares about the money.
The same High and Low scenario happens to him. A kidnapper mistakenly grabs his driver’s son but still demands a high ransom. The broad plot points are there, but Lee makes them his own. Denzel is electric, and Jeffrey Wright is wonderful as the driver.
Much has been made about the first half of the film, and how…well…not good it is. It does concentrate on the moral dilemma, and as such it isn’t as exciting as the back half when they are chasing down the kidnapper. Kurosawa’s film did the same. High and Low kept it almost completely closed off, keeping the action mostly in one setting. But the blocking and camera settings make it completely dynamic. Lee opens things up a bit, but manages to make it less interesting. The score as well feels very out of place. At times, it is too loud as well. But none of these things bothered me all that much. Certainly not as much as some Internet commenters.
In the end, it is a very good film. Not as good as the original, nor even other Spike Lee crime dramas like The 25th Hour or Inside Man, but it is well worth the watching.
Shining Girls
This Apple+ series starring Elisabeth Moss starts out like a standard murder mystery. Moss plays Kirby Mazrachi, who works as an archivist for the Chicago Sun-Times in the early 1990s. A few years prior, she was brutally attacked, her torso sliced completely open, and left for dead. When another woman is murdered with similar wounds, she teams up with alcoholic reporter Dan Velazquez (Wagner Moura) to solve the case.
Buy The Shining GirlsAll of that is fairly standard (but well-made) crime thriller stuff. But pretty quickly things get weird. Periodically, things will change for Kirby. Sometimes they are small things – her hair will suddenly be longer, or she’ll have a cat instead of a dog. Other times there will be big changes; I won’t spoil those, but they are major life events. No one but Kirby realizes these things are changing.
They happen suddenly and without notice. But whereas in other shows these types of changes would be the main event. The characters would spend the rest of the episodes trying to understand why these changes are happening, but here Kirby just kind of shrugs them off. They’ve been happening for so long, she’s simply learned to make adjustments and deal with it.
Eventually, we’ll learn why those changes are happening, and they will solve the murders. It moves well into science-fiction territory. I’m not entirely sure it all comes together perfectly, and there are certainly a whole lot of questions left unanswered, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
Alucarda
I’ve talked about how much I love the Criterion Channel many times before, and this is yet another reason that keeps me a subscriber. They are currently running a collection of films they are calling Nunspolitation. That’s exploitation films featuring nuns (and you can bet these girls are not spending all their time in prayer).
Buy Alucarda DVDAlucarda (and it took my wife to point out that the title is “A Dracula” spelled backwards) is an absolute bonkers little film from 1970s Spain. I don’t even know how to describe it. I’m certainly sure I don’t really know what happened. It involves two young women living at a convent. Their lives are drab until they meet each other. And fall in love. And make a death pact. And worship Satan, become possessed, engage in a little vampirism, and have lots of sex. I’m not sure it is a particularly good movie, but it sure is fun to watch.
Sisters
Sisters isn’t the first film Brian De Palma ever made, but it is the first film that actually feels like a Brian De Palma movie. It makes great use of the director’s trademark split screens and split diopter. It is weird, shockingly violent at times, and really very good.
Buy Sisters (Criterion Collection) Blu-rayMargot Kidder plays twin sisters, one who is perfectly normal, the other a bit crazed and murderous. The film begins with a Candid Camera-style game show with a Peeping Tom angle to it. The good sister pretends to be blind and walks into a dressing room and begins to strip. A man, not knowing this is part of the game show, is also in the dressing room, and contestants must guess whether he’ll stay and peep or leave. At the end of the show, our hero and the man wind up going home together. Then things get weird. And violent.
And if that isn’t the perfect Brian De Palma beginning, I don’t know what is.
It gets better from there. We’ll be treated to a murder, a cover-up, a mental hospital, crazed dream sequences, and so much more. De Palma hasn’t quite perfected his techniques, but Sisters is still a wild, wonderful ride.
The Devils
Speaking of wild, wonderful rides, Ken Russell’s The Devils is absolutely nuts. Set in France in 1634, the film follows Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a popular priest who has become the functioning governor of the small, fortified town of Loudon when the actual governor dies, and Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave) who has become sexually obsessed with him.
When she learns he has secretly married another woman, she proclaims that Grandier has bewitched her, and in fact, her entire convent has become possessed under his orders. A professional witch-hunter is brought in, and there is a trial.
Based on a book by Aldous Huxley, which was based on historical events, The Devils is one of the most controversial movies ever made. It received an X-rating in the U.S. and Britain and was banned in numerous countries. This was mostly due to the ample amounts of sex and nudity, all being performed by church leaders.
Reed and Redgrave are wonderful, and Russell gives it all an intense, go-for-broke vibe. In some ways it feels a bit tame by today’s standards – we’ve all seen plenty of naked nuns by this point – but it still packs a punch.
Robert Redford (1936-2025)
I randomly watched All The President’s Men this weekend. It remains a great film, and Robert Redford is fantastic in it. Dustin Hoffman has the showier role and thus tends to get the attention, but Redford is rock solid. My favorite scene is a six-minute, single take in which Redford (portraying Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward) is on the phone trying to nail down what happened to a $25,000 check. In the background, a crowd gathers around a television set listening to some breaking news (Democratic VP nominee Thomas Eagleton is dropping out), but Redford pays this no mind. He’s busy talking on the telephone, asking important questions of people who’d rather not answer.
It is a masterclass of acting. Fierce yet subdued. He’s gently pushing and prodding for the answers, and when he gets them, he’s visibly excited, but audibly subdued (because if the person on the other side of the phone knows he’s excited, he’ll likely clam up). There is a moment towards the end of the scene where he screws up the character’s name, but he stays in character, and it feels perfectly natural. I love it.
Redford was in an insanely great number of great movies. From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to The Sting, and Jeremiah Johnson. He was one of the last classic movie stars. He was a director, producer, and environmentalist. And of course, he created the Sundance Film Festival, which championed independent films for decades.
Redford passed away yesterday in his home in Utah. Watch a film in his honor this week if you can. I know I will be.
