Patti Smith: Dream of Life (2008)

PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Steven Sebring

First, a disclaimer. I'm not the least bit objective when it comes to Patti Smith. She's my favorite rock-&-roll artist ever, apart from the Grateful Dead, plus she's got something going for her the Dead mostly didn't: She's hot. To make this movie, Steven Sebring followed Smith around for something like 10 years, on stage and away from it, traipsing around the world, or just hanging out in a corner of her house in Manhattan. The result is a cinematic scrapbook, a kind of home movie/art film made with the more or less active participation of its subject. Smith herself is a shape shifter, awkward and self-deprecating, thoughtful and reflective, fierce and defiant, as the moment demands. There's an element of performance in everything she does, at least when there's a camera around, but the performance never seems pretentious. It's just who she is. Like some other musical artists - Pete Seeger and Neil Young would be two more - Smith's on a mission that goes way beyond touring and recording albums. She truly believes, not only that the world can change for the better, but that it has to, and she sees her art as a mechanism that can help bring that about. That's not a bad dream to live by, and Smith, now in her 60s, shows no outward signs of slowing down or backing off. In the process, she's becoming a cool old lady. Which means that the rest of us, cool or not, are getting older, too.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

THE BODY SNATCHER  (1945)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Wise

    Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Bela Lugosi

    Edith Atwater, Russell Wade, Rita Corday

Karloff has a jolly good time as a coachman who moonlights as a grave robber in this atmospheric adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson tale. Henry Daniell is the doctor whose need for fresh corpses keeps Boris in business, and Lugosi skulks around the lab as the caretaker who cleans up after the anatomy lessons are done. When you see Karloff's shadow heading into a cemetery where a cute little dog is guarding its master's newly dug grave, you know it's lights out for the dog.

Beat the Devil (1953)

BEAT THE DEVIL  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: John Huston

    Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida,

    Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Bernard Lee

A real offbeat comedy with a considerable cult reputation, about a gang of crooks trying to get to Africa to score some uranium. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what the hell's going on in this, but the actors appear to be having fun playing characters who can't stop double-crossing each other for any longer than the time it takes to order a drink or light a cigarette. With a script cooked up on the fly by Huston and Truman Capote, it looks like a movie made on a lark, and it probably was, though Bogart personally didn't like it. Lorre does an especially funny bit as the gang's resident philosopher, a sardonic, chain-smoking German named O'Hara.

Jennifer Jones

(1919-2009)

Up In the Air (2009)

UP IN THE AIR  (2009)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jason Reitman

    George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick,

    Jason Bateman, Amy Morton, Melanie Lynskey,

    Sam Elliott, J.K. Simmons, Zach Galifianakis

Ryan Bingham, the character George Clooney plays in "Up In the Air", is like the opposite of a corporate headhunter. He's a hatchet man, a contractor who travels around the country firing people. He's good at what he does, and he loves the perks. He has a first-class card for everything, and he's got air travel and hotel living down to a science. He's blissfully unattached and determined to stay that way. Then he meets two women - Anna Kendrick as a smart junior colleague with some threatening new ideas, and Vera Farmiga as a fellow traveler whose values apparently mirror his own. As long as it stays true to its most mercenary instincts, this is pretty good, a sometimes nasty social satire for the age of cutbacks and looming unemployment. The actors are up to the task, and Reitman ("Thank You For Smoking") has a nice way of confronting and skewering corporate cynicism on its own terms. The story goes off track eventually. Kendrick's character disappears without much warning, and the movie loses something without her. And there's a side trip to Wisconsin for Bingham's sister's wedding that feels like it belongs in a different film, an unconvincing move to give this smooth-talking bastard a heart. The bottom line is, a guy like Ryan Bingham hasn't got a heart. He can't afford one. That's what makes him a good hatchet man. When his boss (Jason Bateman) informs him late in the picture that a tragedy has occurred involving one of the workers he recently fired, Bingham doesn't bat an eye, doesn't betray a thing. He's a professional with a plane to catch and a job to do. At some unnamed company in some distant city, there are cuts to be made, and he's the man with the hatchet. And he's just gone over 10 million flying miles, a long-cherished goal and his personal ticket to travel-perk heaven. Up in the air, life is good.

The Longest Day (1962)

THE LONGEST DAY  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki

    John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum,

    Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Richard Todd,

    Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Eddie Albert, 

    Rod Steiger, George Segal, Mel Ferrer, Sal Mineo,

    Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Stuart Whitman,

    Curt Jürgens, Gert Fröbe, Red Buttons, Leo Genn,

    Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowell, Alexander Knox

Darryl Zanuck's painstaking recreation of D-Day, based on Cornelius Ryan's book, works on an epic scale as well as an intimate one, capturing both the vast scope of the invasion and the individual heroism of its participants. Strikingly shot in black and white, with cameo appearances by just about everybody. Invite your friends over, put this on, and play a three-hour game of spot-the-stars. It's a real good movie, besides.

Richard Todd

(1919-2009)

Burn After Reading (2008)

BURN AFTER READING  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

    Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich,

    George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins

A disgruntled CIA op quits the agency and embarks on a tell-all memoir at the same time that his marriage starts falling apart. A disk containing the memoir falls into the hands of two dim-witted health club workers who think they can use it in a blackmail scheme. Little do they know. The Coen brothers strike again, with a devious comic thriller in which all the players are about equally clueless and the MacGuffin turns out to be worth nothing at all. Highlights: Tilda Swinton as a pediatrician with the bedside manner of Dracula, and Brad Pitt as a gym rat whose cognitive limitations are matched only by his inability to recognize them.

The Flapper (1920)

THE FLAPPER  (1920)  ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Alan Crosland

    Olive Thomas, Theodore Westman Jr.,

    William P. Carlton Jr., Warren Cook

The fun-loving daughter of a stern-faced senator gets sent off to a boarding school just outside New York City, where she's wooed by a military cadet and a rich guy on a horse. Eventually she falls in with a couple of jewel thieves and returns home masquerading as a vamp, but she's still just a sweet young senator's daughter at heart, and everything works out fine in the end. A star vehicle for ex-Ziegfeld Follies headliner Olive Thomas, who died under gruesome circumstances the year of the picture's release. Frivolous but nicely done, with a seemingly effortless performance by one of the silent era's great forgotten stars.

Captain Abu Raed (2007)

CAPTAIN ABU RAED  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Amin Matalqa

    Nadim Sawalha, Rana Sultan, Hussein Al-Sous

Dear Ms. Applebaum,

I just caught a good little movie at the Varsity called "Captain Abu Raed". It's about an old janitor working at the Amman airport who finds a pilot's cap in a trash can and decides to wear it home. He's walking up to his flat when a young boy notices the cap and asks if he's a pilot. He says no but the boy insists, and pretty soon the "captain" is entertaining the neighborhood kids with colorful, made-up stories about his adventures flying planes all over the world. There's more to it than that. It has a lot to do with domestic abuse and the way poverty negates opportunity and how people deal with loss. (The movie's not as downbeat as that probably sounds.) The actor who plays the old man is terrific. If you've ever wanted to take a vicarious trip to Jordan, here's your chance.

Nick

Play-Mate of the Apes (2002)

PLAY-MATE OF THE APES  (2002)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Bacchus

    Misty Mundae, Darian Caine, Debbie Rochon,

    Anoushka, Sharon Engert, Shelby Taylor

A throwaway nudie spoof on some other "Apes" movie, starring straight-to-video goddess Misty Mundae in the title role. It's actually pretty amusing, though saying you watch something like this for the satire is like saying you read Playboy for the articles and interviews. Mundae appears to be the only woman in it who hasn't had her architecture enhanced. Debbie Rochon, an ex-Vancouver street kid who launched her B-movie career in 1982 with a bit role in "The Fabulous Stains", plays an ape called Dr. Cornholeous, which might tell you something about what kind of movie this is. Rochon cowrote the script.

A Christmas Carol (1984)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL  (1984)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Clive Donner

    George C. Scott, David Warner, Susannah York,

    Frank Finlay, Angela Pleasence, Edward Woodward,

    Anthony Walters, Joanne Whalley, Michael Gough

A stalwart champion of the free-market economy learns the true meaning of Christmas with the help of a chain-rattling ex-colleague and three time-tripping spirits. Most critics seem to prefer the 1951 version of the Dickens tale, the one with Alistair Sim, but this production, made for CBS television, has its own followers, and George C. Scott makes a merrily mean-spirited Scrooge. In fact, it's too bad that in his long career, Scott never got to play Jacob Marley. Think about it. George C. Scott as Marley. You wouldn't even need the other ghosts after that.

Edward Woodward

(1930-2009)

Antichrist (2009)

ANTICHRIST  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Lars von Trier

    Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe

Another ticket to hell, punched and stamped by your friendly tour guide, Lars von Trier. This time, your fellow passengers are Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe as a married couple traumatized by the accidental death of their young son. He's a psychologist and she's an emotional wreck, and he thinks if they spend some time together at a cabin in the woods, he can help her though the grieving process and bring her back from the abyss. Instead, she becomes more unstable, and finally goes over the edge. The last half-hour is the art-house equivalent of torture porn. (When Charlotte gets out a long pair of scissors, you might want to consider looking the other way.) Even allowing for the director's impressionistic view of the world, the story doesn't make much sense, and how much of the psychology involved is insightful and how much is claptrap, I couldn't say. But add this movie to what's come before, and two things are plain about Lars von Trier. He's got a vision like nobody else's. And his attitude toward women is real fucked up.

It Started In Naples (1960)

IT STARTED IN NAPLES  (1960)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Melville Shavelson

    Clark Gable, Sophia Loren,

    Vittorio De Sica, Marietto

Clark Gable, looking like an aging caricature of himself, plays a Philadelphia lawyer who goes to Capri to settle his late brother's estate and gets caught up in a custody battle over the eight-year-old nephew he never knew he had. Gable wants to take the kid back to the States. The boy's aunt, a nightclub performer played by Sophia Loren, wants to keep him on Capri. The stars and the island location are the show here. The rest of the movie is slight. Sophia's nightclub routines are a highlight. What she lacks in technique, she makes up for in enthusiasm, and with legs like that, um, when's the next boat to Capri?

Coraline (2009)

CORALINE  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Henry Selick

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" meets "Alice In Wonderland" in an animated feature about a young girl who escapes into an alternate universe that seems too good to be true, and is. A wonderfully imagined fantasy made in 3-D, which has come a long way since "House of Wax". The scruffy gray cat's a scene-stealer, but the characters with the button eyes are creepy and could frighten young children.

Under the Boardwalk (1989)

UNDER THE BOARDWALK  (1989)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Fritz Kiersch

    Richard Joseph Paul, Danielle Von Zerneck, 

    Steve Monarque, Keith Coogan, Roxana Zal, 

    Tracey Walter, Dick Miller, Sonny Bono

Sun, sand, boards, bikinis, life decisions, true love and a violent clash between the "lokes" and the "vals" on the eve of the big Zuma Beach surf competition. "Romeo and Juliet" in the language of surfers, not Shakespeare. It's better than you might think. A rose by any other name would still be gnarly, brah.