The Thing (1982)

THE THING  (1982)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Carpenter
    Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, Richard Dysart,
    Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, T.K. Carter
Kurt Russell takes on the infinitely resilient, body-invading, soul-sucking monster in a remake of the horror classic from 1951. About the only thing missing is Snake Plissken's eyepatch.

Super (2011)

SUPER  (2011)  ¢ ¢
    D: James Gunn
    Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler,
    Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Nathan Fillion
When his beloved but zonked-out wife leaves him for a ruthless drug dealer, a severely depressed short-order cook decides to get even by reinventing himself as a superhero called the Crimson Bolt. This is sort of like "Kick-Ass", or the first part of "Spider-Man", where the superhero isn't really much of a superhero, and his costume doesn't look all that impressive, either. And reality keeps cutting in. Like when you're a crime fighter hiding behind a dumpster waiting for a crime to happen, and nothing does. Or when you're wearing your superhero mask and somebody figures out your real identity right away anyway. Or when you realize that without any actual super powers, you're going to need some real weapons to avoid getting stomped or killed, like a heavy-duty pipe wrench and some guns. There's plenty of potential for humor in this, and in the way the action skews toward real-world violence and not the romanticized, comic-book kind, but the formula's familiarity and Wilson's unsympathetic performance prevent it from being more fun. The main attraction is Ellen Page as the live-wire bookstore clerk who talks her way into becoming the Bolt's kid sidekick. Once she puts her costume on, the energy level picks up considerably.

Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954)

TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jacques Becker
    Jean Gabin, René Dary, Dora Doll,
    Vittorio Sanipoli, Lino Ventura, Jeanne Moreau
A sleek, tough French crime thriller starring Jean Gabin as an aging gangster with an eye on retirement, if he can just cash in the gold ingots he stashed away after his last big heist. Things don't work out the way he hopes. They never do.

Sun Don't Shine (2012)

SUN DON'T SHINE  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Amy Seimetz
    Kate Lyn Shell, Kentucker Audley, Kit Gwin
Crystal and Leo are like your typical young working-class couple driving around Florida in a beat-up car. He works construction and builds cabinets on the side. She works in a bar and has a kid. The kid's with Crystal's mother while they're off on this road trip. It's hot and the two are on edge. They bicker and scrap and make up and make love. And, oh yeah, there's something else. Crystal's husband. He's dead. Crystal killed him. That's his body decomposing in the trunk. This has a little bit of "Badlands" going for it, but where Sissy Spacek was dreamy and detached, Kate Lyn Shell as Crystal is just plain nuts. With her ripe body and and a look that suggests both innocence and longing, she's just the kind of girl who might seem irresistible for a couple of hours if you met her in a bar, and your worst mistake ever to go with your hangover the next day. It's clear that Leo and Crystal honestly care for each other, even if they can't honestly show it. And it's clear that they're playing against a stacked deck. There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. One, don't get involved with a woman who's crazy, no matter how cute and adorable she looks. And two, Florida's the wrong place to be driving around with a rotting corpse in the trunk of your car.

The Longest Yard (1974)

THE LONGEST YARD  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Robert Aldrich
    Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, Ed Lauter,
    Richard Kiel, Bernadette Peters, Michael Conrad
The cons take on the guards in an improbable game of prison-yard football. One of Burt Reynolds' best movies, tailored perfectly to his goof-off, good-ol'-boy persona. Highlights include Bernadette Peters' shatter-proof beehive and a tit-for-tat routine lifted straight from Laurel and Hardy. Old Green Bay Packer fans should keep an eye out for a balding middle linebacker who can break walls with his head. 

Ed Lauter

(1940-2013)

Screen Test / Take 4

Match the following pairs of actors with the movies in which they played brothers:

  1. Kevin Costner and Scott Glenn
  2. Spencer Tracy and Robert Wagner
  3. Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall
  4. John Wayne and Dean Martin
  5. Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale
  6. Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern
  7. Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt
  8. Nick Nolte and Willem Dafoe
  9. Humphrey Bogart and William Holden
10. Ben Johnson and Warren Oates

a. "Affliction"
b. "Sabrina"
c. "A History of Violence"
d. "Silverado"
e. "True Confessions"
f. "The Wild Bunch"
g. "The King of Marvin Gardens"
h. "The Sons of Katie Elder"
i. "The Fighter"
j. "The Mountain"

Answers:
1-d / 2-j / 3-e / 4-h / 5-i / 6-g / 7-c / 8-a / 9-b / 10-f

Gravity (2013)

GRAVITY  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Alfonso Cuarón
    Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris
Bullock and Clooney play astronauts stranded in space when debris from a disintegrating satellite wrecks their shuttle along with the orbiting station that could provide them with an emergency ride home. It's a white-knuckle flight from start to finish, a movie about holding on and letting go. The storytelling's efficient and the 3-D effects are appropriately dazzling, but what carries it mostly is Bullock, smart, strong, sexy, scared and in total command of the screen. She looks great in shorts and a tank top, and when she cries, she sheds weightless tears.

Mourning (2011)

MOURNING  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Morteza Farshbaf
    Kiomars Giti, Sharareh Pasha, Amir Hossein Maleki
An Iranian road movie about a mute couple and their newly orphaned nephew in an SUV on their way to Tehran. The boy's parents have just died in a car wreck, and a lot of the movie is a conversation - an argument, really - between the aunt and uncle, in sign, over who should take responsibility for the kid. It's not the Iran you see on the evening news. It's the Iran of back roads, gravel quarries, mechanical breakdowns and little roadside stores where a kid can buy a coke. In other words, the Iran that's just like everywhere else. The fact that the bickering couple look completely ordinary, and an incidental narrative that ends before anything's really resolved, enhances the sense that what you're watching is pretty close to real life. It leaves you wondering what will happen next. That's pretty close to real life, too.

Dark Victory (1939)

DARK VICTORY  (1939)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Edmund Goulding
    Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart,
    Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan, Henry Travers
Bette Davis plays a rich girl who's dying. George Brent plays the brain surgeon who loves her but can't save her. Cue the violins.