Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006)

YO-YO GIRL COP  (2006)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Kenta Fukasaku
    Aya Matsuura, Rika Ishikawa, Erika Miyoshi
    Yui Okada, Hiroyuki Nagato, Shunsuke Kubozuka
A girl armed with a deadly yo-yo goes undercover in a high school that appears to specialize in bullying and bomb-building. Crazy, escapist action from Japan. The catfight with dueling yo-yos is a highlight.

Shadowlands (1993)

SHADOWLANDS  (1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Richard Attenborough
    Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke,
    Joseph Mazzello, Michael Denison, John Wood
An intelligent tear-jerker about the relationship between the reserved and somewhat stuffy British novelist C.S. Lewis, who wrote "The Chronicles of Narnia", and his decidedly unstuffy American wife, the poet Joy Gresham. A movie about pain and how love helps us live with it. Winger got an Oscar nomination for her affecting, down-to-earth performance. 

Richard Attenborough

(1923-2014)

Words and Pictures (2013)

WORDS AND PICTURES  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Fred Schepisi
    Clive Owen, Juliette Binoche, Amy Tian,
    Fred Negahban, Bruce Davison, Amy Brenneman

Dear Ms. Applebaum,

I saw "Words and Pictures" last night at our local $3 theater. Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche play high school teachers, and they do what they can to look drab and ordinary. Fat chance. He teaches writing and she teaches art, and they get into this war over which means of expression is the best. He's arrogant and she's abrasive, and she's got rheumatoid arthritis, which makes it hard to paint, and he's got a drinking problem, which makes it hard to write, so it's complicated. And (of course) they gradually, grudgingly fall in love. It's one of those movies where you forgive its contrivances because watching the stars go at it is so much fun. Juliette did her own painting, too, apparently. For $3 on a hot summer night, it was just the thing.

Nick

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD  (1924)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Raoul Walsh
    Douglas Fairbanks, Julianne Johnston, Anna May Wong,
    Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher, Sojin, Brandon Hurst
Douglas Fairbanks was at his career peak when he made this sumptuous adventure based on the Arabian Nights. His acting is operatic, even by the standards of silent films, and the movie's a little long, but the production values are outstanding. (At the time of its release, this was the most expensive motion picture ever made.) As for the swaggering grace he brought to his stunt work, Fairbanks couldn't really defy gravity. He just made it look that way.

Sick Girl (2006)

SICK GIRL  (2006)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Lucky McKee
    Erin Brown, Angela Bettis,
    Jesse Hlubik, Marcia Bennett
A woman who's way too fond of bugs gets an unusual specimen in a package from Brazil. She adds it to the insect zoo she keeps in her apartment, and when her new girlfriend moves in, too, and the new bug goes missing, things get icky. An innocuous entry in the "Masters of Horror" television series, played mostly for laughs. Erin Brown, whose claim to screen immortality probably rides on her work as Misty Mundae, the queen of Seduction Cinema's straight-to-video nudie flicks, plays the girlfriend. She still can't act - that's part of her charm - but she does get topless for a moment or two. It's not hard to imagine what Seduction Cinema would do with something like this. 

Goin' To Town (1935)

GOIN' TO TOWN  (1935)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Alexander Hall
    Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, 
    Ivan Lebedeff, Marjorie Gateson
Mae West takes on high society, but is high society ready for Mae West? This is almost certainly the only movie in which Mae West sings opera, and a good example of what she was able to get away with, even after the Production Code took effect. Nobody could slip a winking sexual reference between the lines and past the censors like Mae West. 

No (2012)

NO  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Pablo Larraín
    Gael Garcia Bernal, Alfredo Castro,
    Luis Gnecco, Antonia Zegers
This is where "Z" meets "The War Room", a tense political drama set in 1980s Chile. The government of dictator Augusto Pinochet has called for a referendum it knows it will win, aiming to gain some legitimacy around the world and eight more years of power at home. The vastly understaffed and underfunded opposition hires a commercial ad man (Gael Garcia Bernal) to mastermind its media campaign, while the government hires the ad man's boss and partner to promote Pinochet. The tactics get brutal, but with 15 minutes of national TV time at their disposal each day, the "No" forces can at least get their message out, if they dare to stand up to the increasingly deadly threats to themselves and their families. Shot sometimes crudely on hand-held video equipment, this looks more like a documentary than a dramatization. You feel like you're there, sitting in on the strategy sessions and dodging clubs in the streets. It's a dirty game, no doubt, with a surprise at the end, and a lingering question about what matters more - holding fast to a moral position, or knowing how to sell it. It's a question that's still being asked, and not just in Chile.

Quote File / Take 5

Some lines from the movies of Robin Williams:

"I love jokes. I love all kinds of jokes."
  Williams in "Toys"

"Ernest Hemingway once said all he wanted to do
  was write one true sentence. He also tried to 
  scratch an itch on the back of his head with a 
  shotgun."
  Williams in "World's Greatest Dad"

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. 
  We read and write poetry because we are
  members of the human race."
  Williams in "Dead Poets Society"

"I'm history. I'm outta here. I got the lucky ticket 
  home."
  Williams in "Good Morning, Vietnam"

"Make your life spectacular. I know I did."
  Williams in "Jack"

(1951-2014)

You'll Never Get Rich (1941)

YOU'LL NEVER GET RICH  (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Sidney Lanfield
    Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Robert Benchley
Fred gets drafted and lands in the stockade, but still manages to put on a big show for the boys at the end. A minor Astaire vehicle with Fred and Rita tapping their way through some Cole Porter tunes. (The finale has them dancing on top of a make-believe tank.) The storytelling is thin, but when did that ever matter in a Fred Astaire movie?

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

A MOST WANTED MAN  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Anton Corbijn
    Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright,
    Rachel McAdams, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Nina Hoss
Spooks in Hamburg, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a cagy German op (who's also a disheveled, chain-smoking alcoholic) out to turn a Chechen asylum-seeker and crack the financial network behind a terrorist ring. It's good, dirty-game spy stuff, based on a novel by John le Carré, but what stands out are all the little acting set pieces, scenes that last maybe a minute or two, in which Hoffman, between prodigious hits of nicotine, squares off with the rest of the cast. It was Hoffman's last starring role, and it's the kind of performance that makes you realize, again, that the accolades piling up after his death weren't just hyperbole. He really was that good, and the movie ends on a note that's eerie in its throwaway finality. The actor simply walks away, out of the frame and off the screen, and for once the camera doesn't follow. The movie's over. And Hoffman's gone.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL  (1994)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Mike Newell
    Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, Kristin Scottt Thomas,
    Simon Callow, John Hannah, Charlotte Coleman,
    Rowan Atkinson, Corin Redgrave, Jeremy Kemp

Dear Ms. Applebaum,

I watched "Four Weddings and a Funeral" last night for the first time in 20 years. I remember liking it when it came out, and I liked it again, especially John Hannah's performance in the "Funeral" segment. I'd forgotten how much fun Charlotte Coleman was playing Hugh Grant's roommate, and Rowan Atkinson as the priest - he wasn't on my radar in 1994. Most romantic comedies, they're like, okay, they did that again, who cares. This one is like, wow, they get it, I'd like to watch more of this. Imagine: a script that makes you laugh without insulting your intelligence, and a cast that's smart enough to know what to do with it. I know there are people who aren't crazy about Hugh Grant. The halting and stammering. The tics and mannerisms. But you know what? I think the guy's really good. I don't think light comedy is the easiest thing to pull off. To make it work, you've got to a) nail it and b) make it look easy, and that's something Grant can do. I think if he'd come along in the 1930s, when all those screwball folks were around, he would've fit right in. I don't mind Andie MacDowell, either, but here's the thing: Kristin Scott Thomas is in the movie, too, playing a member of the ensemble, part of the extended family of friends who keep getting together at all these weddings and funerals. She's been quietly carrying the torch for Hugh Grant forever, but do you think he'd pick up on that? No. Of course not. So she doesn't say anything, while he hooks up with all these vastly inferior women, and then, well, it all sort of works out in a comical way, but, shit, she's Kristin Scott Thomas, for Christ's sake. You'd think a halting, stammering, boyishly good-looking bloke with at least one good wandering eye would take notice of that. What a dope.

Nick

Lovelace (2013)

LOVELACE  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
    Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone,
    Robert Patrick, Juno Temple, Hank Azaria, 
    Adam Brody, James Franco, Chris Noth, Debi Mazar,
    Bobby Cannavale, Chloë Sevigny, Wes Bentley
The horrible, fucked-up life of Linda Lovelace, formerly Linda Boreman and later Linda Marchiano, whose career peaked and crashed with her performance in "Deep Throat" in 1972. The movie flips around in time, flashing forward, doubling back and repeating itself to tell how a naive, freckle-faced girl from Florida became the star of the world's most widely watched porno flick. Peter Sarsgaard, who seems to have found a niche specializing in men smart girls would do well to stay away from, plays Chuck Traynor, a despicable lowlife who spots Linda dancing at a roller rink and becomes her boyfriend, husband, manager and pimp. The film is really the story of their abusive relationship, but there's not much depth or insight into Linda and Chuck, or why Linda sticks it out through years of what amounts to torture and rape. What holds it together consistently is Amanda Seyfried's performance as a pretty young woman who's not especially glamorous or sophisticated, and whose ingenuous smile and chronic gullibility make her an easy mark for the sleaze merchants who run the sex film trade. If there's a special place in hell for creepy guys who prey on impressionable young women, Chuck Traynor rates a spot there for sure. And when somebody makes a movie covering that end of the story, Chuck Traynor will almost certainly be played, once again, by Peter Sarsgaard.

Greaser's Palace (1972)

GREASER'S PALACE  (1972)  ¢ ¢
    D: Robert Downey
    Alan Arbus, Luana Anders, Albert Henderson,
    Michael Sullivan, George Morgan, Toni Basil
A Messiah in a zoot suit, white gloves and a wide-brimmed pink hat turns up in the Old West. Which is about the most logical thing that happens in this film. Dr. Sidney Friedman plays the Messiah. Robert Downey Jr. makes his first screen appearance as a little kid. Luana Anders is in it, and you can't go wrong there. It's all supposed to symbolize something, or maybe not, it's hard to say, but the camerawork is good, and Toni Basil appears briefly as a topless Indian girl. How many kilos of weed were consumed during production is something that can only be guessed at.