Clones At Greaser's Palace (1979)

CLONES AT GREASER'S PALACE  (1979)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Richard Martini
    Luana Anders
A short with music but no dialogue, in which all the roles (a screenwriter, a maid, a secretary, a producer and a lesbian hitchhiker in a Columbia Pictures T-shirt) are played by the intriguing but underused actress Luana Anders. The director, Richard Martini, has a website devoted to Anders. You can find the movie there. It was shot on Super 8 and looks like it. Anders died in 1996.

The Hit List: Donald Sutherland

   According to the Internet Movie Database, when Donald Sutherland signed on to play the pot-smoking literature professor in "Animal House", he was offered a choice: $75,000 guaranteed, or a percentage of the profits. Figuring the picture wouldn't make a dime, Sutherland went for the sure money. If he'd taken the points instead, he would've made millions. 
    I'm pretty sure Sutherland has made millions anyway. He's been acting in films for 50 years, and it's hard to think of anybody else in that time who's had a more prolific and enduring career. Michael Caine. Christopher Lee. Redford and Clint and Woody, I guess. It's not a long list. 
    Sutherland hasn't just made a lot of movies, he's made all kinds of them, and his characters defy categorization. Priests, artists, killers, thieves, soldiers, scholars, spies, leads and supporting roles, a whole film vault full of rogues and dreamers and misfits and crazies (and even a few honest men) that few other actors could match. 
    Here's a tiny selection of films that suggest Sutherland's range:

"The Dirty Dozen" 
(1967/Robert Aldrich)
In a famous gallery of psychos and weirdos, Sutherland's Vernon Pinkley stands out as a case study in what it means to be functionally deranged.
"M*A*S*H" 
(1970/Robert Altman)
The original Hawkeye Pierce.
"Kelly's Heroes" 
(1970/Brian G. Huttton)
Sutherland plays a character named Oddball, and there's that spaghetti-style showdown with a German tank. Who knew there were hippies during World War Two?
"Don't Look Now" 
(1973/Nicolas Roeg)
There's Venice, which is creepy, and that love scene with Sutherland and Julie Christie, which is hot.
"1900" 
(1976/Bernardo Bertolucci)
Sutherland plays a fascist in Bertolucci's epic about Italy in the 20th century. 
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" 
(1978/Philip Kaufman)
Sutherland plays a restaurant inspector on the run from the pod people in Kaufman's tense remake of the 1956 Don Siegel film.
"Bear Island" 
(1979/Don Sharp)
Adventure in the Arctic, with a diverse international cast. Watch it and see if you don't think Sutherland's doing a Canadian John Wayne.
"Wolf At the Door" 
(1987/Henning Carlsen)
Sutherland as Gauguin.
"Citizen X" 
(1995/Chris Gerolmo)
Sutherland won an Emmy in a murder mystery about a Soviet army officer locked in a long cat-and-mouse game with a dogged investigator played by Stephen Rea.
"Space Cowboys" 
(2000/Clint Eastwood)
Sutherland's having a ball as the resident Lothario in Eastwood's gang of ancient astronauts.

    Sutherland's in his late 70s now. His hair, which can change dramatically from one role to the next, long ago turned white. Younger viewers would probably recognize him as President Snow in the "Hunger Games" films. For the rest of us, there will always be the firebug in "Backdraft", the assassin in "Eye of the Needle", Oddball, John Klute and Hawkeye Pierce. A hundred characters at least, in a hundred eclectic movies, and if you don't mention that he once appeared in a dreary waste of time and film called "Revolution", neither will I.

Primer (2004)

PRIMER  (2004)  ¢ ¢
    D: Shane Carruth
    Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, 
    Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya
Two young technogeeks , working out of a garage and a storage locker, invent a time machine and (of course) use themselves as subjects. Apparently there's a chart out there somewhere that maps out all the resulting timelines, which get pretty mixed up, once the guys start going in and out of the box, and especially once their doubles enter the picture. For a lot of viewers, I'm not sure even that would help. Most of the movie is just Carruth and Sullivan talking, and they seem to have the puzzle pretty much worked out, but in the absence of an accessible narrative (and without a handy timeline map), it's hard to know what's going on, or care. 

They Only Kill Their Masters (1972)

THEY ONLY KILL THEIR MASTERS  (1972)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: James Goldstone
    James Garner, Katharine Ross, Hal Holbrook,
    Harry Guardino, June Allyson, Peter Lawford, 
    Tom Ewell, Edmond O'Brien, Arthur O'Connell
When a woman's body washes up on the beach, murdered, the immediate suspect is her pet Doberman. When it turns out she drowned, but not in the ocean, a small-town detective (James Garner) concludes that it probably wasn't the dog who done it. A laid-back murder mystery that plays like a TV pilot, or an extended episode of "The Rockford Files". Great supporting cast, and an ideal vehicle for Garner, who made acting look so easy for so long, it's easy not to notice how good he really is.

James Garner

(1928-2014)

Headhunters (2011)

HEADHUNTERS  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Morten Tyldum
    Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau,
    Sunnove Macody Lund, Eivind Sander,
    Julie Olgaard, Kyrre Haugen Sydness
"Headhunters" takes place in Norway and it's based on a novel by Jo Nesbo. There are two headhunters. One's a guy who recruits high-end executives for high-end jobs. The other's a former commando, an expert in high-tech weaponry, who wants a job real bad. They're on opposite sides in a story that revolves around the theft of a painting that could be worth 100 million kroner. I watched this with Dr. Sporgersi, who thought it reminded him of a Coen Brothers film, and I kind of see his point. Take a character you have no emotional stake in anyway, and see how much comic hell you can put him through before the movie ends. The hell in this case includes a pit bull, a razor, a pair of hefty twin police officers, a stolen semi, tiny tracking devices planted in somebody's hair, knives, guns, a band of video voyeurs and an outhouse. The outhouse looks like it's been used a lot without ever being cleaned out. What's the worst thing that could happen with something like that? You'll see.

Grandview, U.S.A. (1984)

GRANDVIEW, U.S.A.  (1984)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Randal Kleiser
    Jamie Lee Curtis, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze,
    Jennifer Jason Leigh, Troy Donahue, William Windom,
    M. Emmett Walsh, John Cusack, Joan Cusack
Trailer-park Americana starring Jamie Lee Curtis as the tenacious owner of a down-and-out demolition-derby track that the local city fathers consider an eyesore and want to get rid of. (They also want to cash in on the property, once it's condemned.) Patrick Swayze plays the hot-headed driver Jamie finds herself attracted to, against her better judgment. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Swayze's wandering wife. C. Thomas Howell plays a kid who's got a crush on Jamie. And shit happens. The scope might be modest, but that's an asset in a movie like this, a reminder that the universe - on film and elsewhere - doesn't always revolve around high-end gadgets and whiz-bang effects and superheroes saving the world. Sometimes it's more like a pack of smokes and the smell of gasoline and a cold beer on a hot day. That's the world Kleiser and company capture here, and Curtis has one of her best roles ever, smart, strong, funny, sexy, a compelling visual argument for blue jeans and a confident, grown-up model for tomboys everywhere.

Wild Target (2010)

WILD TARGET  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jonathan Lynn
    Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint,
    Rupert Everett, Eileen Atkins, Martin Freeman
An off-kilter black comedy about a hit man who hooks up with the kleptomaniac he's supposed to kill. Blunt models a variety of eye-catching outfits, and Nighy's zoned-out aplomb and delayed double takes are out in full force. The movie goes its mad, merry way, and if a few more or less innocent characters get plugged at point-blank range, they're no more or less dead than the unlucky parrot who ends up with a hat pin through its heart after meeting the hit man's mother. 

Ice Station Zebra (1968)

ICE STATION ZEBRA  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Sturges
    Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, Ernest Borgnine,
    Jim Brown, Tony Bill, Lloyd Nolan, Alf Kjellin
Cold War adventure starring Rock Hudson as the stalwart captain of a U.S. nuclear submarine on a rescue mission in the Arctic, where something's going on that only a British spy (Patrick McGoohan) and a Russian double agent (Ernest Borgnine) seem to know anything about. Suspense under the ice, and on the frozen surface, with occasional bouts of exposition to help you track the typically convoluted Alistair MacLean plot. Howard Hughes, in his eccentric later years, loved this movie, and reportedly watched it 150 times.

Life Itself (2014)

LIFE ITSELF  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Steve James
The only time I saw Roger Ebert in person was around 1980 at the Majestic Theater in Madison. He was there to show some film clips and do a Q&A about movies, and I remember that he struck me as kind of arrogant, which was how he usually came across in those TV shows he did with Gene Siskel. I don't know to what extent he was really like that, but it didn't appear to be an act. So it was interesting to see how much genuine affection he attracted in the time leading up to his death, and the unprecedented amount of grief (for a film critic!) that followed his passing last year. Of course, Ebert was no ordinary film critic. He was easily the most widely recognized movie reviewer in the world, and arguably the best writer who ever tried to make sense of what he saw in those images flashing across the screen. This documentary tracks Ebert and his lifelong passion for journalism from Urbana, Illinois, where as a kid he wrote, published and delivered his own neighborhood newspaper, through his Pulitzer Prize-winning work for the Chicago Sun-Times, his combative love-hate relationship with Siskel, his drinking and sobriety, his marriage (at 50) to the love of his life, Chaz, and, painfully, his heroic (and very public) battle with cancer. There might be lives that can be reduced to two hours of screen time. Ebert's was not one of them. But the access James had to Roger and Chaz toward the end makes the movie as indispensable as it is, sometimes, hard to watch. Ebert might've been an asshole (Siskel thought so), but you can see, too, why so many people loved the guy, and if you don't come away from this admiring his courage, you must be living on the moon. It's not often you see Martin Scorsese at a loss for words, choking up. It happens when he's talking about Ebert in this, and that's saying something.

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS  (1973)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Denis Sanders
    William Smith, Anitra Ford, Victoria Vetri,
    Anna Aries, Katie Saylor, Beverly Powers
The bee girls are these witchy babes with weird black eyeballs who have somehow linked themselves genetically with bees and are going around seducing men and killing them with sex. It's every bit as nutty as it sounds, with more than enough bee-girl T&A to make up for its artistic shortcomings. The highlight has to be the bizarre sequence where a naked bee-girl recruit gets slathered in some sticky white glop before being swarmed by a million bees. You sure don't see that every day. This was one of Gene & Roger's favorite guilty pleasures.

Edge of Darkness (2010)

EDGE OF DARKNESS  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Martin Campbell
    Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston,
    Bojana Novakovic, Shawn Roberts, Denis O'Hare
In a story with some striking parallels to "The Lovely Bones", Mad Mel plays a Boston police detective whose daughter is gunned down in a drive-by in front of his house. If you've watched any previous Mel Gibson movies, you know that messing with Mel's family in any way in the opening reel is not a smart thing to do if you want to survive to the end of the film. But thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly), this is about more than simple revenge. It's an intricate whodunit, with Mel going through the grieving process at the same time his investigation uncovers a maze of government and corporate deceit, all of it tied to his daughter's murder. He's helped along the way by a mercenary troubleshooter with a dry sense of humor and a lethal sense of ethics, played by Ray Winstone. There's plenty of action, too, and Winstone steals every scene that's not bolted to the floor. The resolution's a lot like the ending in "Hamlet". Everybody dies.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

THE LOVELY BONES  (2009)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Peter Jackson
    Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz,
    Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Rose McGiver
The protagonist in this movie, based on Alice Seybold's novel, is a suburban teenager named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), who's murdered on her way home from school one day and hangs around in a limbo-like afterlife, keeping a watchful eye on both her family and her killer. Peter Jackson would seem to be the right guy to make a picture like that, but for every scene that dazzles, there's something else that goes flat or seems way too obvious. The credit and the blame are in the uneven script. There's some suspense in the story and Jackson's visuals are stunning, but the pieces don't always add up. (The fact that it's being narrated by a dead 14-year-old might have something to do with that.) Susan Sarandon, looking horrid, plays the girl's boozy grandmother, and Stanley Tucci's suitably creepy as the kind of strange man parents warn their kids to stay away from.

Seven Samurai (1954)

SEVEN SAMURAI  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Akira Kurosawa
    Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba,
    Ko Kimura, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki
Some desperately poor peasants in 16th-century Japan hire a band of misfit warriors to defend their village from marauding bandits, feeding them in exchange for protection. The first half of the movie is about how the warriors come together and train the peasants to fight off the coming attack. The second half is the siege, with the final battle playing out in a sea of mud in a driving rainstorm. Kurosawa's long, exciting and often comical samurai movie pretty much set the standard for the genre and has influenced action filmmakers ever since. (When Sam Peckinpah said he wanted to make westerns like Kurosawa made westerns, this is what he had in mind.) The samurai leader, played by Yul Brynner a few years later in "The Magnificent Seven", looks and acts a lot like Lee Van Cleef.