The Cabin In the Woods (2011)

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Drew Goddard
    Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison,
    Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins,
    Bradley Whitford, Amy Acker, Tim DeZarn
Five good-looking, fun-loving 20-somethings pile into a camper and head out to - you guessed it - a cabin in the woods. Bad things happen to them there. You know the types. The blonde bimbo (she just dyed her hair). The jock (he wears a letter jacket). The egghead (he's built like a jock, too, but he's the sensitive type). The stoner (guess what he does all day). And the virgin (she's not, really, but as somebody explains late in the picture, you work with what you have). They're formula characters all the way, in a formula movie, up to a point. Beyond that point, the film's off the grid, going where no other slasher movie has quite so explicitly gone before. To say much more would reveal too much, and I won't tell you who turns up in a surprise cameo toward the end. See it before you find out.

Once Upon a Time In the West (1968)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Sergio Leone
    Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale,
    Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti, Lionel Stander,
    Keenan Wynn, Jack Elam, Woody Strode
The most widely referenced line from a John Ford movie is in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). A newspaper editor, faced with a choice between printing a true story, or a fabrication that everybody believes, chooses to go with the lie. "When the legend becomes fact," he says, "print the legend." Sergio Leone's movies go a step beyond that. Leone's philosophy is more like, "Start with the legend and twist it some more, till you make up a legend of your own." If Ford's movies are romanticized depictions of life on the frontier, Leone's movies exist in another world. "Once Upon a Time In the West" is Leone's long, slow, grand epic about the building of the transcontinental railroad. Henry Fonda plays Frank, a hired killer who announces his appearance early on by gunning down a little boy at point-blank range, after slaughtering the kid's entire family. Claudia Cardinale plays Jill, a New Orleans prostitute who has come out to the desert as the new wife of the little boy's now dead father. Jason Robards plays a rival outlaw leader named Cheyenne, who doesn't like being framed for Fonda's murders. Charles Bronson plays a stranger called Harmonica, who only knows a couple of notes, but turns deadly when he stops playing them. Their story plays out in the windswept vastness of Monument Valley, Ford's favorite shooting location. There's much stillness. A great score by Ennio Morricone that tells you as much about what's going on as anything the characters say. Amusing cameos by Jack Elam and Woody Strode. Many long, tight close-ups. And Fonda, smiling and spitting tobacco as he calmly blows away that little kid. This is not John Ford's legendary West. It's more like John Ford on a bottle of bad tequila. Absurd and deranged. A mirage formed out of the heat and dust. A comedy of death. A dream.

People Who Die Mysteriously In Their Sleep (2004)

PEOPLE WHO DIE MYSTERIOUSLY IN THEIR SLEEP  (2004)  ¢
    D: David Gaz, Kevin Pore
Here's a potentially interesting comic idea that goes nowhere for 90 long minutes. It's a "sampling movie," made out of clips from "The Lost World", "The Golem", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and several other horror classics spliced together with a soundtrack added to tell a story that has nothing to do with the original films. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with anything else, either. It's all but undecipherable and spectacularly unfunny. The only amusing bit comes when Max Schreck's vampire in "Nosferatu" explains his thoughts and motives in the bizarre vocal cadences of Christopher Walken. If the rest of it doesn't bore you to death, you'll at least wish you were watching "Nosferatu" or "The Lost World" instead.

Criss Cross (1949)

CRISS CROSS  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Robert Siodmak
    Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea,
    Stephen McNally, Percy Helton, Richard Long
Young Burt Lancaster plays a guy named Steve, who returns to L.A., moves in with his family and gets his old job back driving an armored car. Without really planning to (he says), he wanders into the joint he used to hang out in, where without really planning to (he says), he runs into his ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo), now hooked up with a gangster played by Dan Duryea. You just know things are going to go bad here, and they do. A good, downbeat thriller with some nice location work on the streets of Los Angeles. Lancaster gives one of his best early performances, and longtime bit player Percy Helton gets more screen time than usual as a sweetly sinister bartender.

Turn Me On, Dammit! (2011)

TURN ME ON, DAMMIT!  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
    Helene Bergsholm, Malin Bjorhovde, Beate Stofring,
    Matias Myren, Henriette Steenstrup, Julia Schacht
Hormones, adolescent cruelty, bad choices and bad luck all crash in on a 15-year-old girl named Alma in this coming-of-age movie from Norway. Jacobsen and her young cast do a nice job of getting at how teenagers think and act, but it might be easier to sympathize with the heroine's plight if she wasn't, like, the cutest 15-year-old girl in Norway. Her best friend, a would-be activist who divides her time between chain-smoking cigarettes and writing letters to death-row inmates in Texas, is a much more interesting character, and would be more credible as a social outcast. But she's not the cutest girl in Norway. Or maybe I'm missing the point.

The Loved One (1965)

THE LOVED ONE  (1965)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Tony Richardson
    Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Ajanette Comer,
    Rod Steiger, John Gielgud, James Coburn, Liberace,
    Milton Berle, Roddy McDowall, Tab Hunter,
    Lionel Stander, Dana Andrews, Robert Morley,
    Aylene Gibbons, Margaret Leighton, Alan Napier
An impoverished poet touches down in Los Angeles and moves in with an uncle who works in the movie industry. The uncle proceeds to hang himself, leaving the poet with no money and a funeral to arrange. Fortunately, there's a job opening at a pet cemetery run by Jonathan Winters, and a 13-year-old rocket scientist with the know-how to blast corpses into space. An envelope-pushing black comedy with a script by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood, based on a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Some bits are funnier than others, but wait till you see Aylene Gibbons as Rod Steiger's mother. (For that matter, wait till you see Rod Steiger.) While you're watching it, see if you can guess which cast members are gay, and which ones are just acting that way.

Jonathan Winters

(1925-2013)

Trouble With the Curve (2012)

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Robert Lorenz
    Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake,
    John Goodman, Matthew Lillard, Robert Patrick,
    Bob Gunton, George Wyner, Ed Lauter
Clint plays an old-school baseball scout whose eyesight is failing. Amy Adams plays his estranged daughter, a high-powered attorney who tags along with the old man on a tour of minor league parks in the Carolinas, where a hot prospect is hitting the cover off the ball. There's nothing in this movie you haven't seen before, not much Eastwood hasn't done before, nothing you can't see coming a long way off. And, I don't know, maybe that's why it works. Without having to put much thought into what's going to happen next, you're free to kick back and appreciate the ease and confidence with which the formula's delivered. It's like the cinematic equivalent of walking into a comfortable bar. Find a table. Order a cold one. See what's on the jukebox. Maybe shoot a game of pool. Forget about life for a couple of hours. Make yourself at home.

Barbarella (1968)

BARBARELLA  (1968)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Roger Vadim
    Jane Fonda, David Hemmings, Milo O'Shea,
    John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg,
    Marcel Marceau, Ugo Tognazzi, Claude Dauphin
A late-'60s pop artifact starring Jane Fonda as an intergalactic explorer with a distracting habit of losing her clothes. The movie Fonda would rather not be remembered for, not that it's likely to go away anytime soon. Worth catching for Jane's cheeky presence, if nothing else. Vadim's soundstage effects look tawdry, but maybe that's the point. The opening credits should not be missed. 

Milo O'Shea

(1926-2013)

How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Dean DeBlois
An action-oriented animated feature about a Viking boy who goes to dragon-killing school and learns there's a whole different way to deal with dragons. Not all dragons, but most of them. The Vikings speak in a variety of English accents - none of them sound Scandinavian - but when they sail into battle, you'd better get out of their way. And when was the last time you saw a PG-rated cartoon that acknowledged the potential real-life impact of heavy-duty fighting, not just in terms of victory and defeat, or life and death, but amputations and artificial limbs? Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill and Kristin Wiig supply some of the voices. John Powell composed the rousing musical score.

Withnail & I (1987)

WITHNAIL & I  (1987)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Bruce Robinson
    Richard E. Grant, Paul McCann, Richard Griffiths
    Ralph Brown, Michael Elphick, Michael Wardle
A desperately funny lowlife comedy about two young out-of-work actors sharing a run-down flat, living in squalor, scrounging for food and spending all their money on booze. (Think back hard enough, and at some point we've probably all known somebody who lived like that.) Grant, who in real life doesn't drink, acts drunk with uncanny conviction, and Brown's a scream as a functionally zoned-out drug dealer. This has picked up a cult following in Britain, where some fans can mimic every line. Trying to match its lead characters drink-for-drink while watching it is not recommended.

Richard Griffiths

(1947-2013)

End Title

Gene Siskel

(1946-1999)

Roger Ebert

(1942-2013)

The balcony is closed.

Prometheus (2012)

PROMETHEUS  (2012)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ridley Scott
    Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron,
    Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green
Ridley Scott's disputed prequel to "Alien" has a team of scientists on a spaceship heading off to a planet in a distant solar system, where creatures just like us, or maybe the entity that created us, could be waiting. This is where the "Alien" story meets "2001", the classic monster-in-outer-space movie hooking up with the ultimate cosmic quest. It's an ambitious undertaking, with moments of wonder and horror, but the script never catches up with what it seems to be trying to do. "Alien" had a much narrower focus. Scott's aim there was simply to scare the hell out of you, and he did. "Prometheus" has a lot more characters (and not a lot of character development for any of them), we know (more or less) what's coming, and as an answer to heavy-duty questions about life, death, God and are we alone in the universe, a line like "It's what I choose to believe" seems a little inadequate. Connoisseurs of icky effects will like the part where the archeologist/astronaut played by Noomi Rapace programs her own cesarian abortion, a scene that would be even harder to watch if the actress, wearing only her space-age undies and gleaming with sweat and blood, were not so visually distracting. Michael Fassbender has the old Ian Holm/Lance Henriksen role, an android who has modeled his appearance and demeanor on Peter O'Toole's performance in "Lawrence of Arabia". Which raises another question: How come Guy Pearce, under a ton of old-age makeup, is playing the ancient scientist who created the robot, when Scott (presumably) could've hired the authentically ancient Peter O'Toole?

Tales of Terror (1962)

TALES OF TERROR  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Roger Corman
    Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre,
    Debra Paget, Joyce Jameson, Maggie Pierce
A trilogy of macabre stories lifted from Edgar Allan Poe, released by American International, starring Vincent Price, and directed (of course) by Roger Corman. In "Morella", Price plays a widower still mourning his long-dead wife, whose corpse he keeps on display in his cobwebbed mansion. In "The Black Cat", Peter Lorre challenges Price to a wine-tasting contest and exacts some deadly revenge. In "The Case of M. Valdemar", Price plays a dying man and Basil Rathbone's a hypnotist with an eye for Vincent's beautiful young wife.  The middle episode's the best, for Lorre's irascibility and Price's fruity flamboyance. Just watch the dainty ritual he goes through each time he tries a new vintage. Only Vincent Price could get away with that.