Zachariah (1971)

ZACHARIAH  (1971)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Englund

    John Rubenstein, Don Johnson, Pat Quinn,

    William Challee, Elvin Jones, Doug Kershaw,

    Dick Van Patten, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez

What if there were electric guitars on the frontier? An existential rock-&-roll western starring Rubenstein and Johnson as gunfighters who join an outlaw gang played by Country Joe and the Fish. Belle Starr turns up, too, played archly by Pat Quinn, and the boys both dally a little, but in Englund's West the men are men and mostly have eyes for each other. If that all sounds a bit strange, wait till you see the movie. The expression "one of a kind" was invented for pictures like this.

Invictus (2009)

INVICTUS  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Clint Eastwood

    Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tony Kgoroge

    Patrick Mofokeng, Matt Stern, Julian Lewis Jones

There's a moment early on in "Invictus" that has nothing to do with anything else in the movie, that captures what the picture's about in a single shot. It's when Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the newly elected president of South Africa, looks at his reflection in the mirror as he's about to shave. The lower half of his face is covered with lather, so that the face staring back at him is effectively half black and half white. The film is about Mandela's heroic effort to heal South Africa's racial division in the wake of the country's shift to majority rule. He did that in part by backing the national rugby team - long a symbol of white domination - in its unlikely quest to win the world title in a tournament to be held, conveniently, in South Africa. It makes for an exciting, satisfying sports movie, and a somewhat less satisfying political one. There's some obvious exposition in Anthony Peckham's script, and while Mandela's troubled family life is alluded to, the incidental imperfections that might make him seem a little less saintly tend to get lost. To be fair, it's a tricky act to pull off. Mandela, now in his 90s, is justifiably revered, not just in Africa, but worldwide. And from a storytelling perspective, the rugby competition, with its clear-cut drama and action on the field, is the easy part. Of course, on an emotional level, that's the part that really engages the viewer. And as the less exciting part of the movie makes clear, that's something Mandela understood.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

ELMER GANTRY  (1960)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Richard Brooks

    Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy,

    Shirley Jones, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe,

    Patti Page, Edward Andrews, John McIntire

An itinerant pitchman with a carnival hustler's charm and a rare talent for b.s. gives up liquor and women, at least temporarily, when he cons his way into a traveling revival show. Hard-hitting drama based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, with Lancaster in peak form as the seductive, hell-raising Gantry. Trained as an acrobat, with an unerring sense of movement and timing, Lancaster might be the least spontaneous actor in movie history, but it's hard to imagine anybody else taking a serious role this far over the top with such impeccable control. When he exclaims to a tent-show crowd, with a trademark flashing of teeth, that he's "seen the devil plenty of times," he delivers the line with such demonic glee, you believe he's not only made Satan's acquaintance, but enjoyed every sinful second of it. Jean Simmons plays the revival show's star attraction, a character modeled on Aimee Semple McPherson, and the future Mrs. Partridge won an Oscar for her role as a hooker with an old grudge and a plan to exact some serious personal revenge.

Jean Simmons

(1929-2010)

Daisy Kenyon (1947)

DAISY KENYON  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Otto Preminger

    Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews,

    Henry Fonda, Ruth Warrick

Joan Crawford plays a woman torn between two men: a married lawyer played by Dana Andrews and a G.I. played by Henry Fonda. Neither of them seems entirely trustworthy. These days, she'd probably just get on with her life and tell them both to take a hike, but apparently that wasn't an option for Joan Crawford in 1947. What's a girl to do?

Paranormal Activity (2009)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY  (2009)  ¢   

    D: Oren Peli

    Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat,

    Mark Fredrichs, Ashley Palmer

The camera verité gimmick unleashed by "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 always had limited potential, and with "Paranormal Activity", it's really run out of gas. This time, it's the story of Micah and Katie, a young couple living in a haunted house. (As it turns out, it's Katie who's haunted.) But Micah has a video camera, see, and he's obsessive about filming everything, so that's the point of view you've got through the whole movie. You don't get to know much about the characters, and as the picture goes on, you realize you don't really want to. It's not that Sloat and Featherston do a bad job playing them. It's that with no help at all from the script, and not much in the way of personality to distinguish them, Micah and Katie as characters are flat-out boring. You don't ever find out what's going on, either. Ghosts? Demons? Madness? The last few seconds are quite creepy, but by then it's a case of much too little, way too late.

The 10 Best Movies of 2009

THE TEN BEST:

"In the Loop"

"O'Horten"

"Still Walking"

"Captain Abu Raed"

"Rumba"

"North Face"

"Everlasting Moments"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"The Young Victoria"

"Coraline"

SECRET TREASURES:

"Absurdistan"

"Flame and Citron"

"The Limits of Control"

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Zombieland"

"Pirate Radio"

"Antichrist"

BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN:

"The Swimmer"

"Betty Blue"

"The Night of the Hunter"

"Never Give a Sucker an Even Break"

FOUR FROM THE VIDEO STORE:

"Ben-Hur" (1925)

"Top Hat"

"Intermission"

"The Long Night"

WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR:

"Paranormal Activity"

In the Loop (2009)

IN THE LOOP  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Armando Iannucci

    Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison,

    Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky, Gina McKee,

    James Gandolfini, David Rasche, Enzo Cilenti

Political underlings on both sides of the Atlantic deceive, insult, seduce and double-deal their way to a war resolution at the U.N. A merciless, warp-speed black comedy laced with so much inventive, laugh-out-loud profanity that one viewing, or even two or three, might not be enough. The game's the thing for these characters, and they're all juiced on playing it, with the possible exception of James Gandolfini as a medal-heavy Army general, the only guy in the room who actually knows something about war. You'd like to think wars don't really get started this way. But then there's the war in Iraq . . .

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

GIRL, INTERRUPTED  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: James Mangold

    Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall,

    Brittany Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Vanessa Redgrave,

    Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, Mary Kay Place

Winona over the cuckoo's nest, with the dark-eyed one as a troubled teenager who checks into a mental institution after chasing a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. This hasn't got the crushing sense of despair that ran through "Cuckoo's Nest". (There's a big difference between the head nurse played by Louise Fletcher in that movie and her counterpart played by Whoopi Goldberg in this one.) But the characters are annoyingly believable, it's very well acted, and Mangold does a good job of keeping the melodramatics under control. Jolie won an Oscar playing the ward's most outgoing and in-your-face crazy person, and Ryder, a skeleton wreathed in cigarette smoke, is as good as she's ever been.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

THE DARJEELING LIMITED  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Wes Anderson

    Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman,

    Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Irfan Khan,

    Barbet Schroeder, Camilla Rutherford, Bill Murray

Wes Anderson's movies continue to explore the dynamics of family relationships. This one zeroes in on three brothers on a half-baked spiritual journey by train through India. We don't know much about them, really. Jack (Jason Schwartzman) is breaking up with a girlfriend nobody seems to like. (See "Hotel Chevalier".) Peter (Adrien Brody) is about to become a father. Francis (Owen Wilson) is still wearing the bandages from a head-first suicide attempt. So they've all got individual issues, but what the film really ends up being about is how they respond to each other, as decades of shared history, old grudges, and imagined slights and resentments break to the surface. You know how brothers and sisters can bait each other and love each other and crack each other up and drive each other crazy, all at the same time? It's like that. We're all on this trip together, after all. But sometimes you've got to let go of the baggage, if you want to catch the train.

Fighting Caravans (1931)

FIGHTING CARAVANS  (1931)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Otto Brower

    Gary Cooper, Lily Damita, Ernest Torrance,

    Tully Marshall, Fred Kohler, Eugene Pallette

Young Gary Cooper, his gunbelt slung low on his hip, plays a frontier scout escorting a wagon train across rivers, plains, deserts and mountains to Sacramento. There are some Indians, too. An unremarkable western with a little too much footage devoted to a couple of alleged comic-relief characters played by Ernest Torrance and Tully Marshall. Except for a few nice montage sequences, Cooper's aw-shucks presence is the only draw. The climactic battle, in which the settlers circle the wagons and Torrance and Marshall keep score as they pick off Indians like targets in a shooting gallery, would probably not be considered politically correct today. That's just a guess.

Venus (2006)

VENUS  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Roger Michell

    Peter O'Toole, Jodie Whittaker, Leslie Phillips,

    Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Griffiths, Beatrice Savoretti

Peter O'Toole, well into his 70s and looking it, plays a lecherous old actor whose failing prostate hasn't dimmed the gleam in his wandering eye. The equipment might not work the way it used to, but he's not dead yet, either, and when a colleague's surly niece crosses his path, it's enough to ignite a last flickering pang of desire. It's vintage O'Toole, the kind of grand, theatrical role and performance that's become the actor's signature, but he knows when to scale it back, too. There's an air of resignation about this stylish, foul-mouthed gent, not from any lingering sense of regret, but for a life lived fully, coming to an end. The movie's a well-made trifle. O'Toole turns it into something more.

Final Reel 2009

PAT HINGLE, 84, actor

  "Batman" (1989)

  "Norma Rae"

  "The Gauntlet"

CLAUDE BERRI, 74, writer, director, producer

  "Jean de Florette"

  "Manon of the Spring"

PATRICK MCGOOHAN, 80, actor

  "Braveheart"

  "Escape From Alcatraz" 

  "The Moonshine War"

RICARDO MONTALBAN, 88, actor

  "Cheyenne Autumn" 

  "The Naked Gun"

  "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"

JAMES WHITMORE, 87, actor

  "Them!"

  "The Shawshank Redemption"

  "Planet of the Apes" (1968)

HORTON FOOTE, 92, writer

  "To Kill a Mockingbird"

  "Tender Mercies" 

  "The Trip To Bountiful"

BETSY BLAIR, 85, actress

  "Marty"

  "Il Grido"

  "Betrayed"

NATASHA RICHARDSON, 45, actress

  "The Handmaid's Tale"

  "Nell"

  "The Comfort of Strangers"

MAURICE JARRE, 84, composer

  "Lawrence of Arabia"

  "Doctor Zhivago"

  "Witness"

MARILYN CHAMBERS, 56, actress

  "Rabid"

  "Behind the Green Door"

  "Resurrection of Eve"

JACK CARDIFF, 94, director, cinematographer

  "The Barefoot Contessa"

  "The Long Ships"

  "War and Peace" (1956)

KEN ANNAKIN, 94, director

  "Battle of the Bulge"

  "The Call of the Wild" 

  "The Longest Day"

DOM DELUISE, 75, actor

  "Blazing Saddles"

  "Silent Movie"

  "The Cannonball Run"

DAVID CARRADINE, 72, actor

  "Bound For Glory"

  "The Long Riders"

  "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"

HARVE PRESNELL, 76, actor

  "Paint Your Wagon"

  "Fargo"

  "Saving Private Ryan"

KARL MALDEN, 97, actor

  "On the Waterfront"

  "Patton"

  "I Confess"

BUDD SCHULBERG, 95, writer

  "On the Waterfront"

  "The Harder They Fall"

  "A Face In the Crowd"

JOHN HUGHES, 59, writer, director, producer

  "Sixteen Candles"

  "The Breakfast Club"

  "Planes, Trains & Automobiles"

JOHN QUADE, 71, actor

  "The Outlaw Josey Wales"

  "Every Which Way But Loose"

LARRY GELBART, 81, writer

  "Movie Movie"

  "Neighbors"

  "Tootsie"

PATRICK SWAYZE, 57, actor

  "Road House" (1989)

  "Ghost"

  "Point Break"

HENRY GIBSON, 73, actor

  "Nashville"

  "The Blues Brothers"

  "Magnolia"

JOSEPH WISEMAN, 91, actor

  "Dr. No"

  "Masada"

  "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz"

PAUL WENDKOS, 87, director

  "Gidget"

  "Cannon For Cordoba"

  "The Mephisto Waltz"

EDWARD WOODWARD, 79, actor

  "The Wicker Man"

  "Breaker Morant"

  "A Christmas Carol" (1984)

RICHARD TODD, 90, actor

  "The Dam Busters"

  "Saint Joan"

  "The Longest Day"

GENE BARRY, 90, actor

  "The War of the Worlds"

  "Forty Guns"

  "Thunder Road"

DAN O'BANNON, 63, writer

  "Dark Star"

  "Alien"

  "Total Recall"

JENNIFER JONES, 90, actress

  "The Song of Bernadette"

  "Beat the Devil"

  "Duel In the Sun"

BRITTANY MURPHY, 32, actress

  "8 Mile"

  "Sin City"

  "The Dead Girl"

ARNOLD STANG, 91, actor

  "The Man With the Golden Arm"

  "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World"

"I don't trust happiness. I never did. I never will."

  Robert Duvall in "Tender Mercies"    

  (Screenplay by Horton Foote)             

Everlasting Moments (2008)

EVERLASTING MOMENTS  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Jan Troell

    Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt,

    Jesper Christiansen, Amanda Ooms

This movie drops you right down in early 20th-century Sweden, where a young woman named Maria (Maria Heiskanen) has just won a camera in a lottery and married the man who bought her the ticket. The man, a philandering longshoreman named Sigfrid, is an abusive alcoholic she stoically stays with through thick and thin, binges and beatings, dock strikes and prison terms, crushing poverty and a half-dozen children. And every now and then, she gets out the "Contessa" from the bottom of a drawer or the back of a closet, and shoots a few pictures. It's clear that she has an eye, and in those rare, fleeting moments of creativity, in the darkroom or behind the lens, she visibly comes alive in a way that's denied her in every other aspect of her existence. It's a knowing, evocative look back at a place and time when most people, and especially most women, had few options, none of them real good ones. The movie itself has the look of old photographs, Troell exploring Maria's world the way a photographer would, and Persbrandt in particular has a face straight out of a century-old snapshot. That Maria and Sigfrid don't age much over the 20 hard years the story covers might seem strange at first, till you consider: The faces in those old photographs don't age, either.