The Wolfman (2010)

THE WOLFMAN  (2010)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joe Johnston

    Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt,

    Hugo Weaving, Geraldine Chaplin, Antony Sher

In this take on the old werewolf story, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is a prominent 19th-century actor who returns to the decaying family estate after a long absence to investigate the violent death of his brother. It seems brother Ben was out walking on the moor one night - under a full moon, of course - when he was ripped to shreds by some monstrous beast. Del Toro's Lawrence is the brooding type to begin with (just like Lon Chaney Jr. in the 1941 version), and when the monster in question attacks him, too, well, let's just say it doesn't improve his disposition. The story expands on Curt Siodmak's original screenplay, and that's not an improvement, either. There's nothing going on here you can't see coming a mile away. When a doctor brings poor Larry into a lecture hall strapped to a wheelchair, to prove to his colleagues that nothing will happen when the full moon breaks overhead, what do you think's going to happen? It does. Del Toro's effectively cast as the tormented protagonist, and Emily Blunt, apparently on loan from the set of "The Young Victoria", looks great as Ben's (and Larry's) love interest. An impressively aging Geraldine Chaplin plays the gypsy woman who can see what others can't, and Anthony Hopkins cackles and purrs as Larry's domineering father, who's hiding a terrible secret of his own. The older "Wolf Man" worked because of its narrative simplicity, shadowy atmosphere, Chaney's anguished performance and that famous lap-dissolve camerawork. This movie's noisier, bloodier, more elaborate and more technically advanced. But it's not a better film.

That's Carry On (1977)

THAT'S CARRY ON  (1977)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Gerald Thomas

    Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, Sid James,

    Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Bernard Cribbins,

    Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw, Jim Dale,

    Esma Cannon, Eric Barker, Hattie Jacques,

    Leslie Phillips, Percy Herbert, Elke Sommer,

    Shirley Eaton, Phil Silvers, Juliet Mills

Hail, hail, the gang's all here. A compilation of highlight clips from the "Carry On" films, a series of blatantly silly ensemble comedies that kept Britain in stitches from the 1950s through the 1970s. There's no real U.S. equivalent to the "Carry On" movies, and this is as good an introduction to what they're about as you're likely to get. Series regulars Barbara Windsor and Kenneth Williams introduce the clips, and a running gag has Williams stuck in the projection booth while desperately needing to make a trip to the loo. That's "Carry On".

The Naked Edge

Annette Bening in "The Grifters"

Jodie Foster in "Nell"

Holly Hunter in "Thirteen"

Nastassja Kinski in "To the Devil a Daughter"

Sissy Spacek in "Carrie"

Emily Mortimer in "Lovely & Amazing"

Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Secretary"

Diane Keaton in "Something's Gotta Give"

Debra Winger in "The Sheltering Sky"

Misty Mundae in "Play-Mate of the Apes"

When Will I Be Loved (2004)

WHEN WILL I BE LOVED  (2004)  ¢ 1/2

    D: James Toback

    Neve Campbell, Frederick Weller, Dominic Chianese,

    Karen Allen, Lori Singer, Mike Tyson

The first time you see Neve Campbell in this, she's taking a shower. It's right at the beginning of the movie, and the shots of Neve taking a shower are intercut with shots of her lowlife boyfriend (Frederick Weller) trying to hustle up a deal on the streets of New York. I suppose there could be some deep metaphorical significance to that shower scene, but I was too distracted by Neve Campbell to notice. That happens sometimes. Neve's character turns out to be a spoiled rich girl with real nice clothes and a bright, new Manhattan loft, who hustles men for the fun of it. In fact, everybody in the film is hustling somebody for something, usually on the pretext that they're giving them something, or making them happy, or helping them grow as a person, which is bullshit and ought to be played for laughs, but it's not. It's just tedious, and by the end, you can't help feeling you've been hustled yourself. Still, that's a pretty nice shower scene.

Insignificance (1985)

INSIGNIFICANCE  (1985)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Nicolas Roeg

    Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, Tony Curtis,

    Michael Emil, Will Sampson

Reality's all in the mind in this offbeat theater piece in which characters representing Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Albert Einstein and Joe McCarthy cross paths in a New York hotel room in 1954. Curtis gives one of his best performances as the slimy, Red-baiting senator, and Will Sampson does a bemused cameo as the world's tallest Indian elevator operator. The scene in which Monroe demonstrates how relativity works for Einstein is a highlight. The ending's a bit of a shock.

Tony Curtis

(1925-2010)

61* (2001)

61*  (2001)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Billy Crystal

    Barry Pepper, Thomas Jane, Richard Masur,

    Bruce McGill, Christopher McDonald, Donald Moffat,

    Jennifer Crystal Foley, Robert Joy, Michael Nouri,

    Seymour Cassel, Anthony Michael Hall, Renee Taylor

Before BALCO and Andro, before McGuire and Sosa and Bonds, there was 1961, and a mutual quest by New York Yankees outfielders Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth's single-season home run record. Mantle was the fans' favorite, a great ballplayer and chronic party animal who thrived in the spotlight. Maris was the opposite of that: a basically unassuming guy who could field well and hit for power, who became more and more unsettled as the record and the glare of public attention closed in. As a lifelong Yankees fan, Billy Crystal has a passion for the story that can't be dismissed, even if the script never deviates from what's already obvious. Pepper, who looks a lot like Maris, and Jane, who's a dead ringer for Mantle, are more than capable in the leads, and when you consider what players were being paid back then (Maris got $38,000 the year he broke the record), and the principal substances they used (beer and unfiltered Camels), you get a real sense of how the game has changed.

Alice's Restaurant (1969)

ALICE'S RESTAURANT  (1969)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Arthur Penn

    Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn, James Broderick,

    Michael McClanathan, Geoff Outlaw, Tina Chen,

    M. Emmett Walsh, Pete Seeger, Shelley Plimpton

A late-'60s time capsule based on Arlo Guthrie's extended talking song about Alice and Ray and their restaurant in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and hippies and cops and the draft and a red Volkswagen microbus and two tons of garbage. There's almost no story, really, just a bunch of stuff that happens along the way, and not everybody who watches the movie will be able to relate to that, but Penn's hang-loose approach nicely captures an era and an attitude whose impact on the culture transcended its relatively short shelf life. Pete Seeger turns up to serenade a dying Woody Guthrie, and Shelley Plimpton sniffles her way through a brief but fetching cameo as a groupie with a head cold.

Arthur Penn

(1922-2010)

The Memory of a Killer (2003)

THE MEMORY OF A KILLER  (2003)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Erik Van Looy

    Jan Decleir, Koen De Buow, Werner De Smedt,

    Jo De Meyere, Deborah Ostrega, Patrick Descamps

An aging hit man in the early stages of Alzheimer's travels to Antwerp from Marseilles to do a job. When he learns that one of his targets is a 12-year-old girl, he refuses to carry out the assignment and instead starts tracking down his employers, working his way up the food chain and leaving behind a trail of corpses while playing cat-and-mouse with the cops. A good, tight, well-played thriller with an indelible lead performance by Jan Decleir as a man with no future and therefore nothing to lose, a brutally efficient thug-turned-death's angel, desperately clinging to what remains of his memory as he blasts his way into the twilight. Like Johnny Hallyday's bank robber in "Man On the Train", this is a guy you wouldn't necessarily want to meet up with, ever. But you don't want to see the lights go out on him, either, at least not till his last, bloody mission is accomplished.

The Old Dark House (1932)

THE OLD DARK HOUSE  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: James Whale

    Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart,

    Melvyn Douglas, Ernest Thesiger, Lilian Bond,

    Raymond Massey, Eva Moore, Elspeth Dudgeon

A macabre drawing-room comedy - more accurately a dining-room comedy - about some young travelers who take shelter in an old Welsh mansion on a dark and stormy night. A little creaky but still fun, with a literate script and a good cast, directed in the spirit of a Halloween prank by James ("Frankenstein") Whale. The Gloria Stuart who appears here is the same Gloria Stuart who turned up 65 years later as the elderly Rose in "Titanic".

Gloria Stuart

(1910-2010)

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)

THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID  
    D: Philip Kaufman                                  (1972)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    Cliff Robertson, Robert Duvall, Luke Askew,

    R.G. Armstrong, Donald Moffat, Dana Elcar,

    Matt Clark, Royal Dano, Elisha Cook Jr.

Shrugging off a shot at amnesty from the Missouri state legislature, the James Gang rides north to rob a bank in Minnesota, with a railroad car full of hired guns riding after them. This covers roughly the same territory as Walter Hill's "The Long Riders", and while Jesse James is the outlaw in all the history books, the character who makes both films fun to watch is Cole Younger (David Carradine in "The Long Riders", Cliff Robertson here). Robertson's Cole is fascinated with modern technology. His favorite word, whenever he spies a new piece of machinery, is "wonderment," and a calliope, a steam-driven tractor, and a long-distance talking device just introduced by A.G. Bell all qualify as wonderments. (He's less impressed with an evolving new sport called baseball.) If Cole's got an eye on the future, Jesse's all about the past. As played by Robert Duvall, Jesse's a fanatic, still fighting the Civil War in 1876, on a mission not so much to rob banks as to kill Yankees. Cole will kill when it's called for. Jesse kills because he can. As much as an outlaw western, this is a portrait of America in the year of its centennial, specifically the rough but increasingly civilized Midwestern frontier. During an extended old-time baseball sequence that's as violent and unruly as it is extraneous to the plot, somebody tells Cole that baseball's now the country's favorite sport. Cole argues that America's favorite sport will always be shooting. Then he levels his rifle, draws a bead on a high pop-up, and blasts the ball out of the sky. The ball's ruined, and that's the end of the baseball game. Shooting wins.