Zombie Strippers (2008)

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS  (2008)  ¢ ¢
    D: Jay Lee
    Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund, Roxy Saint,
    Shamron Moore, Joey Medina, Jennifer Holland
A zombie virus infects an underground strip club, turning the newly deceased dancers into real man-eaters. Writer/director Jay Lee plays the old zombie formula for a few good topical laughs, mostly at the expense of the second Bush administration, but he doesn't seem to know how to tell a story. It takes about five minutes for the zombie-fighting commandos to learn what anybody who's watched even one zombie movie already knows: You've got to shoot the zombies in the head. So what happens after that? About a million bullets get fired at the zombies, but hardly anybody shoots a zombie in the head. These sharpshooters need more time on the rifle range, if you ask me. It's not like the zombies are moving that fast. Porn star Jenna Jameson plays one of the undead strippers. If she plans to use something like this as a stepping stone to more mainstream film work, hmmm, maybe she shouldn't quit her day job just yet. 

3 Women (1977)

3 WOMEN  (1977)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Robert Altman
    Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule,
    Robert Fortier, Ruth Nelson, John Cromwell
This story takes place in the desert in Southern California. Shelley Duvall plays Millie, a delusional young woman working as an aide in a senior care facility, driving around in a mustard-colored Ford Pinto, and talking incessantly to neighbors and coworkers who either pointedly ignore her or laugh behind her back. Sissy Spacek plays Pinkie, a desperately needy new girl who latches onto Millie and becomes her roommate. Janice Rule plays Willie, a mute, pregnant artist who spends most of her time painting exotic murals on concrete patios and swimming pools. Those are the three women. The movie's by Robert Altman, who claims he based it on a dream, and it kind of feels like one, a trancelike meditation on transference revolving around characters who are detached from reality to begin with. It's a strange movie, for sure, the kind of thing that could only come from Hollywood in the 1970s, and maybe only from Altman. Effectively off-kilter musical score by Gerald Busby. Haunting performances by all three women.

La France (2007)

LA FRANCE  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Serge Bozon
    Sylvie Testud, Pascal Gregory,
    Guillaume Verdier, Guillaume Depardieu
An absurdist French movie about a woman named Camille, whose husband has gone off to fight in World War One. One day she gets a letter telling her he won't be back and not to write anymore. Determined to find him, she disguises herself as a boy and heads for the front herself. Along the way, she falls in with a small band of soldiers who appear to be walking around lost in the wake of a battle. The key to a movie like this is wondering whether the woman with the cropped hair and trousers could actually pass. Sylvie Testud's performance is ambiguous enough that way to leave the question open, but she's not the only one flirting with androgyny. The soldiers aren't cross-dressing, but every once in a while, out of the blue, they pull out musical instruments and break into song. They sing very badly, and the song's always the same: a rambling, first-person account about a blind girl and her numerous unlikely lovers. It all plays out like a dream or a nightmare, and Testud plays Camille with a deadpan stillness that commands your attention. Now if some enterprising French filmmaker would just make a Buster Keaton movie. And get Sylvie Testud to star.

The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH  (1976)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Nicolas Roeg
    David Bowie, Candy Clark,
    Rip Torn, Buck Henry
David Bowie and his languid narcissism take on the role of an extraterrestrial visitor in a cult oddity from cult oddity specialist Nicolas Roeg. Bowie's spectral presence is the main draw, but his remoteness, and the film's, could test your endurance as the running time edges toward two-and-a-half hours. It might be one of those movies that works better when mind-altering substances are involved. I watched it without them, so that's just a guess.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

THERE WILL BE BLOOD  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Paul Thomas Anderson
    Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano,
    Ciarán Hinds, Kevin J. O'Connor
30 years in the life of a uniquely American monster: a free-market sociopath named Daniel Plainview, the protagonist of Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel "Oil!" The first time you see Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), he's a hardscrabble miner breaking his back at the bottom of a pit, breaking up shale with a pick and hoping to strike it rich. The year is 1898. Plainview does strike it rich, acquiring more wealth than most mortals would know what to do with. It's not enough. Both the character and Day-Lewis's drawling vocal delivery have drawn comparisons to Noah Cross, the monster John Huston played in "Chinatown". The two would be rough contemporaries, and they share a spiritual kinship (and a capacity for ruthlessness) as rugged individuals in an age of unbridled greed. Unlike Cross, Plainview has no apparent interest in sex or women, but there's a moment, when he offers his protection to a very young girl, when you can't help thinking about old Noah. It makes your skin crawl. Where Cross practically oozed false charm, Plainview doesn't even make a pretense of it, barely concealing his contempt for the suckers he's buying out, or his raging hatred for anybody who stands in his way. It's a ferocious performance by Day-Lewis, one that recalls his work as Bill the Butcher in "Gangs of New York": a cold-blooded force of nature with no apparent values beyond taking what he wants any way he can get it. In the end, there's a sense that Plainview has lost something, but it's hard to tell what. He's cut himself off from the rest of humanity, but that's hardly tragic. He hates people anyway. Maybe it's the old biblical line about gaining the world at the cost of your soul. A soul seems to be something Daniel Plainview was born without.

Wife vs. Secretary (1936)

WIFE VS. SECRETARY  (1936)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Clarence Brown
    Clark Gable, Myrna Loy,
    Jean Harlow, James Stewart
Gable plays a magazine publisher. Loy plays his wife. Harlow plays his secretary. Stewart plays Harlow's boyfriend. Fill in the blanks.

Bullet To the Head (2012)

BULLET TO THE HEAD  (2012)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Walter Hill
    Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Jason Momoa,
    Sarah Shahi, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, Christian Slater
A cop and a hit man take on a bunch of bad guys, and the bad guys all end up dead. So that's the story. Testosterone rules the day. Walter Hill oversees the carnage. Grandpa Stallone, moving with only slightly less agility than the Frankenstein Monster, dispenses the formula mayhem. "What are we, Vikings?" Grandpa Stallone asks, as he and another musclebound ape get ready to square off in an ax fight toward the end. For better or worse, it's one of the best lines in the movie.

Flashback: Schwarzenegger and Stallone

   When I was a teenager back in the Dark Ages, Mae West would turn up on television once in a while, doing a guest spot on some comedy show like "Red Skelton" or "Mr. Ed". She was about 70 then, but she was still Mae West, posing provocatively with a hand on one hip in some anachronistic floor-length gown, and purring out what passed for risqué dialogue in the sanitized world of network TV. She was a gaudy testament to the combined power of chutzpah and cosmetics, too old, really, to be doing what she was doing, but shamelessly doing it anyway, a lacquered, tongue-in-cheek monument to herself. My mom always said that Mae West looked "well-upholstered." 
    A few months ago, I caught the trailer for the latest Sylvester Stallone movie, a beat-'em-up, shoot-'em-up actionfest called "Bullet To the Head". And there was Stallone, at 65 or thereabouts, hair blacker than coal at midnight, face close to immobile, bare arms an absurdly contoured relief map of bulging veins and muscles. He looked like a caricature of himself, a freak. 
    A few months before that, I caught Arnold Schwarzenegger on some TV talk show, doing P.R./damage control in the wake of a sex scandal that had brought about the breakup of his storybook marriage. And there was Arnold, at 65 or thereabouts, Grecian Formula hair perfectly groomed, skin all shiny and smooth, looking not quite as massive as in his body-building days, but still formidable enough for some nameless thug to give up his clothes and boots and motorcycle if Arnold asked for them. 
    And at some point it occurred to me: These guys are starting to look upholstered. 
    Growing old gracefully is not something all movie stars manage. Clint Eastwood seems to be doing it about as well as anybody, as long as he's not on stage at a political convention, talking to a chair. He's in his 80s now, and looks it, but genes, luck and a lifelong commitment to physical fitness appear to have paid off. He's also made a series of movies, starting 20 years ago with "Unforgiven", that have allowed him to grow older on screen gradually, reflecting on and often spoofing the aging process. 
    Meanwhile, Clint's contemporary, Burt Reynolds, has practically disappeared, the victim of one too many good-ol'-boy flicks ("Stroker Ace" usually gets the blame) and a shortage of suitable big-screen roles as he got into and beyond middle age. Charles Bronson, who was older than Burt and Clint, kept mowing down bad guys well into his 70s by sticking with a durable B-movie formula (infinite variations on "Death Wish") that allowed him to just go on being Charles Bronson.
    Bruce Willis, who's a few years younger than Sly and Arnold, hasn't hit Medicare eligibility yet, but he will. Willis has an advantage going forward that some action stars don't: He can act. "Die Hard" might be his meal ticket now, but he can also play comedy ("Moonrise Kingdom"), or creep you out ("Mortal Thoughts"), and he doesn't seem to mind taking smaller roles in movies that interest him. Also, he's already bald. Like Sean Connery, he can wear whatever hairpiece (or no hairpiece) a part requires. So he doesn't have the hair color issue to worry about. 
    Where does that leave Schwarzenegger and Stallone? It's not entirely clear. They're both established stars with iconic screen personas, but they're both pretty much doing what they were doing 30 years ago. At some point in the next few years, they're going to have to call it a career (as Connery and Gene Hackman have done), or figure out a way to act their ages while retaining the public's interest. So far, they seem to be avoiding both options, while looking more and more, well, upholstered.

The Letter (1940)

THE LETTER  (1940)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Wyler
    Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson,
    Gale Sondergaard, Cecil Kellaway, Sen Yung
This movie takes place in Singapore and starts out with Bette Davis firing a revolver at a guy five or six times, killing him. The rest of the movie is about why she did that, and what happens as a result. Believe her if you want to (whichever story she happens to be telling), but never trust Bette Davis with a loaded revolver, is all I've got to say.