I could see this being a good use case for AI (does Warner own that title through RKO’s library)? I also think Welles was weird enough that he’d approve this usage. I don’t know the story behind the movie, but it would likely be copying footage and voices and then using his intended script. Again, it might not turn out well but this is a really good use case of what’s possible.
If it works you might see something like this used to restore missing scenes from Lugosi’s Dracula.
Based on the article, some of their approach may be wrong. I think they should only create shots from original footage when possible to make it look like the real movie. My feeling is this will look like a bunch of inserted garbage, but maybe it will work.
YMMV. I liked it overall. I didn’t think it was consistently funny wall to wall, but I think it gave me my two hardest laughs of any 2025 movie so far.
I watched Maverick (1994) last night. Its structure is a little too episodic for my taste, and it starts out pretty slow. At least the last few episodes are very good, plus Jodie Foster still looks as good as I remembered. I was worried the leisurely pace was losing my kids, but my teenage daughter ended up liking it over all and was very concerned when the marshal ran off with the prize money.
Garner (hitting on Jodie Foster): “my feeling is, if there weren’t any women, none of us would be here.”
Gibson (sneering): “what sort of sense does that make? If it weren’t for men, none of us would be here either.”
Garner: “are you mocking me?!”
I’m always glad the movie exists for that exchange alone.
You ever watch a movie that is otherwise really good and then completely faceplants with one of the worst endings you’ve ever seen?
I’m so fucking mad at this movie. According to Google, the source novel did it right. The movie then adapted it and fucked it up. I wanted to blame the studio for the ending, but a deep-dive suggests that Fritz Lang was perfectly on board with it, so fuck him too even though I like other movies in his filmography.
I logged it as a 3/5, but it’s more like one that would be a 3.5 or 4 and now it feels unprincipled that I’m giving it a passing grade at all. Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit. I’m so mad.
It’s on Tubi or Hoopla if you want to have the same infuriating experience I just did!
95% of the movie was a dream sequence, and in the movie’s world, literally nothing of any consequence happened. A fair bit more appropriate for the “Zack Attack” episode of Saved by the Bell than for a fully realized Fritz Lang/Edward G. Robinson movie.
It seems like it might have been. I like other Fritz Lang stuff. M is great. Fury was quite good. I wanted to blame this on the Hays code and the awful ways that studios would destroy movies in that time period, but there’s this little snippet to render me unable to let Lang off the hook.
And wouldn’t you know it, the ending worked. The Woman in the Window was a hit at the box office. While critics complained about the ending, they praised the film overall. According to McGilligan, quoting Fritz Lang, “the happier ending 'made a difference of a million dollars more in receipts.”
If it was purely the studio’s fault and they forced Lang into it then I might be able to mentally decanonize that aspect of it. But since he gleefully accepted a big wad of sweaty money to approve the idea, obviously there’s no pass to grant him.
It is teased that Edward G. Robinson’s character, who kills a man in self-defense earlier in the movie and then hides the body instead of alerting the police, has deliberately drank poison to commit suicide at the end of the film just as his problem would have been resolved elsewhere. Which is how the book did it. Instead, they lapse forward and he is seemingly just napping after a drink that didn’t kill him, calling all the way back to a point before any of the conflict in the plot got going.
Okay. I admit some level of ignorance of the Hays code. I thought part of their whole thing was trying to enforce a bunch of happy horseshit that earlier movies didn’t have to adhere to, beyond specific things like “bad moral deeds must get a comeuppance” and whatever else. 1940s movies certainly went softer than 1930s movies did, especially early 1930s movies.
