Valerie Perrine 1943-2026

 

Agosto Machado 1940?-2026

 

Who Killed Teddy Bear 1965

 You might want to have a good hot shower waiting for you after you view this cheapo B thriller from 1965. There is a sadness attached to it, maybe it has to do with seeing the late Sal Mineo at the end of his short and sometimes impressive career or the cheap actual dingy apartments, or the time lost footage of the long gone Times Sq. The plot is sordid. A sexual stalker is on the loose and we know who it is pretty much as soon as the film begins. The investigation is led by a police detective played by an unexpected Jan Murray whose wife was slaughtered by a sexually crazed killer who has never been found, and he takes a deep personal approach to the new crimes, especially the threatening calls that Juliet Prowse keeps getting.

Juliet spins disco records at a seedy dance club managed by Elaine Strich where Sal also works. Strich who is lesbian and in keeping with the times will not have a happy time of it. Strich along with Murray and Mineo have eyes for Juliet, oh those legs but all three get nowhere with her. The calls continue and the chase is on to find the stalker before he turns into a killer. The film is fun for its actual shooting on New York streets and in Times Sq. along with the campy disco where these people from another time, do these silly dances that look scary and dated.

Sal lives in a cramped dump with his mentally challenged sister who saw something when she was a kid that caused her to fall down a flight of stairs in fright. Sal takes care of her as best he can and our sympathies are with them. At least for a time. What she saw finally comes out, and you will have to sit through this B to find the answer which is very sordid and ugly especially for its time. Also the images of sal in a tight bathing suit showing off his bulge and butt did not sit well with the censors at the time, and the film had trouble finding places to show it. It was banned in England for a time. Feminists applaud the film for the strong woman Juliet Prowse projects especially for the time who takes no prisoners or shit from anyone. I'm not on the bandwagon for this film, its just too sordid and nasty for me, but the nyc footage by joseph Brun is great, and seeing the wonderful Sal Mineo is a treat. This film has a big cult following and it is now showing on the Criterion Channel.

Robert Mueller 1944-2026

 

jane LaPotaire 1944-2026

 

Calvin Tomkins 1925-2026

 

 The Bicycle Thieves 1948

Talk about great movies, and it should lead you to this superb Italian neo realist classic directed by the great Vittorio de Sica in 1948. I haven't seen it in years, and thanks to the Criterion Channel I was able to view it in a really nice transfer the other night. It took the silliness of the Oscars and put them where they belong, I think Sean Penn would agree with me. Set in the post war city of Rome which is also one of the “stars” of the film, the story is simple but the emotions are complex. A struggling father with a little baby and a nine year old boy, is desperate to find a job, but the one he does find posting advertising bills and posters requires a bicycle which is in the pawn shop.

His sad wife literally takes the sheets off their bed and takes them to the pawn shop to hopefully get the money to get his bike out of hock. They do, and if you think things are looking up for this family forget about it. I'm not going to give away much of the plot but there are many scenes of tenderness and sadness especially between the father beautifully played by Lamberto Maggiorani and his young son brilliantly acted by Enzo Staiola. The scene of them eating out in a restaurant maybe for the first time tore me up even though the scene has some obvious touches.

Actually the entire film tore me up, and I'm still looking for the pieces. This is neo realism which means of course that it was filmed in the actual streets of Rome with mainly real people but De Sica uses many actors both professional and untrained in most of the key acting roles. The film won the honorary Oscar in 1949 as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the united states during 1949 and also was nominated for the screenplay Oscar but lost to “A Letter To Three Wives.”. Of course the title gives the plot away but you need to see it to get the raw beauty and yes elegance of this great film and I promise that the ending will reduce you to tears or at least stay with you for a couple of days. One of the ten best films of 1948.

Country Joe McDonald 1942-2026

 

The Secret Agent 2025

A heartbreaking work of staggering beauty and intensity. If the Oscars get it right with their oncoming onslaught of glamour and bad taste, then Wagner Moura will walk off with the best actor Oscar, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the 3rd time I've seen him act. His most famous role is his intense on going part in “Narcos” that harsh series in which he played Pablo Escobar.

I also caught him in an early film from 2014 “Futuro Beach” in which he plays a young gay man who works as a lifeguard and gets involved with a German tourist who becomes his longtime lover. His recent appearance in”The Secret Agent” takes place in the past of 1977 when Brazil is under the long and violent arm of their long military dictatorship that took place from 1964 to 1985.

The film's title brought up for me The 1930's Alfred Hitchcock film about spies and yes secret agents, but don't let the title mislead you as it has nothing to do with the Hitchcock film or the short stories by W. Somerset

Maugham that it was based on.

Moura plays a widowed research professor with a young son who is being hounded by the fascists and he has to get himself and his charming young son out of the country. That is basically the plot, but this is a long film and there is a lot of meat on its bones that brings together all the horror of a brutal dictatorship along with moments of surreal and deadly humor, that mainly involves a severed foot found in the belly of a shark.

Sharks both human and the other kind are also here, especially in the references to “Jaws” the movie that is playing in one of the big movie palaces that is operated by Moura's father in law, and is the one movie that his young child is possessed by, begging his father and grandfather to allow him to see it, and even doing many drawings based on the movie ads that he gets inspiration from. This is a wonderful touch and Kleber Mendonca Filho who did a marvelous documentary called “Pictures of Ghosts” about his childhood memories of the many movie palaces that filled his youth in his home town of Recife, which is also the city that The Secret Agent takes place in and these palaces are also referenced in this film.

This is not an easy film, its nearly 3 hours, it jumps back and forth between the present, and the past and its politics will not sit easy with the average American viewer who wants their guts and glory preferably under 2 hours. However for the rest of us, this is an unnerving look at what happens when countries are taken over by harsh fascistic dictators and the thousands of lives that they destroy. From its shocking opening to its final sad ending this is a film that will stay with me for a long time. One of the ten best films of 2025.

Oddball Magazine

Oddball Magazine, that oddball oddball has just published a poem by Jules Nyquist along with one of my fat donnie pieces. You can see it all at the link below. 


 https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-jules-nyquist-3/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQS12lleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF2ZDFubDQ3aEtmd1FmVGxmc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHm3xPg1FVnDRvVOENbptTk3bx17VKhgGjPZP_SXuv3C7fF_qhxwFQ2Phh8yT_aem_6CSxKjtskQhkhEqw6OlUvw

Newest piece. Untitled. Mixed Jan Feb 2026