The Blue Room (2014)

THE BLUE ROOM  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mathieu Amalric
    Mathieu Amalric, Léa Drucker, Stéphanie Cléau,
    Laurent Poitrenaux, Serge Bozon, Blutch
Mathieu Amalric has watchful eyes, maybe the most watchful eyes in film. It's no accident he wound up with the lead role in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", as a man who's paralyzed and has only one moveable body part to work with - an eye. In "The Blue Room", Amalric plays a farm equipment dealer who has an adulterous affair with the local pharmacist. Through some shifty editing, the movie slips from the two of them talking and making out in bed to a police interrogation. Apparently a crime has been committed and he's a suspect. You don't know what the crime is yet - you eventually find out - but what's interesting, besides trying to work out the key to the puzzle, is to watch Amalric's character, who claims to be innocent, fighting back at first, arguing and combative, and then gradually letting go as he realizes the trap he's in and sees that the more he struggles and resists, the tighter the noose gets around his neck. In the end, he barely speaks or moves at all, and there are only the eyes of a man caught in a trap, betrayed, defeated, watching.

Dead of Night (1945)

DEAD OF NIGHT  (1945)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, 
    Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton
    C: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Antony Baird,
    Judy Kelly, Googie Withers, Sally Ann Howes,
    Michael Redgrave, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne
A stranger shows up at an English country house and joins a group of people trading strange stories about dreams they've had and wondering if the dreams could be a warning about some terrible event to come. The stories involve a hearse and a streetcar, a game of hide-and-seek, a mirror and a game of golf. The last one, featuring Michael Redgrave and a ventriloquist's dummy, is the creepiest. Not a bad choice for a dark and stormy night. 

Fred Won't Move Out (2012)

FRED WON'T MOVE OUT  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Richard Ledes
    Elliott Gould, Fred Melamed, Stephanie Roth Haberle,
    Judith Roberts, Mfoniso Udofia, Ariana Altman
Elliott Gould plays the Fred of the title, an old guy still hobbling around the country house he's lived in forever with his wife Susan, who's slipping away in the fog of Alzheimer's. Susan (Judith Roberts) needs more help than she can get at home, even with a full-time caregiver, and their kids have arranged for them both to move into an assisted-living facility in the city. Fred doesn't want to go. What this movie quietly gets right are the everyday details that go with aging, and the tough, real-life decisions faced by elderly parents and their middle-aged children. There's a kind of intimacy about the way the camera moves through the house that makes you feel like an eavesdropper, or a member of the family, letting you know how daunting a stairway can be for somebody on old, wobbly legs, and the agonizing amount of time it can take to maneuver an invalid from a bed in one room to a chair in another. Gould in his 70s seems a little young yet to be playing Fred - you'd like to see what he could do with a role like this in about ten years - but Roberts is unforgettable as a woman who still has flickering moments of joy, but whose cognitive wires no longer connect. Anybody who's had to deal with very old loved ones will find something to relate to in this. Anybody who hasn't but might in the future would do well to watch and take notes.

Still Mine (2012)

STILL MINE  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Michael McGowan
    James Cromwell, Genevieve Bujold, Campbell Scott,
    Julie Stewart, Rick Roberts, Jonathan Potts
Cromwell and Bujold play Craig and Irene Morrison, an old couple living on a farm in New Brunswick. They're about as happy as two long-married people in their 80s can be, but her memory's starting to slip, and when she takes a fall down the stairs, he decides to build a new house to accommodate her increasing limitations. The movie's about Craig's battle over codes and permits to build his own home, and the couple's struggle to cope as Irene's ability to process and retain information becomes more erratic. It's a heart-wrenching story, told with admirable restraint and exquisitely acted by Bujold and Cromwell. It's no surprise to see Cromwell looking old. He's looked that way more or less forever. But it's a shock (at least for some of us) to see Bujold looking like somebody's grandmother. Where did the time go, anyway?

Desert Island Women / Take 2

The Movie Buzzard, who's getting a little long in the beak himself, would watch these women anytime, still.

                         Sissy Spacek
                         Sigourney Weaver
                         Geraldine Chaplin
                         Genevieve Bujold
                         Susan Sarandon
                         Diane Keaton
                         Julie Christie
                         Charlotte Rampling
                         Liv Ullmann
                         Lily Tomlin

The Rounder (1930)

THE ROUNDER  (1930)  ¢ ¢
    D: J.C. Nugent
    Jack Benny, Dorothy Sebastian,
    George K. Arthur, Polly Moran
Jack gets home late from a night on the town, climbs a ladder up to his room, and discovers he's entered the wrong house. The rest of the movie has him negotiating with the woman who lives there over what she should pay him to marry her and what his duties as a husband should be. Benny honed his comedy in vaudeville and perfected it on radio and television, where he could milk a pained silence or a long, long pause for maximum comic effect. In this early sound short, the timing's not there and the material barely registers. Jack was not yet 39 when he made it - he would famously remain 39 for more than 40 years - so the movie predates one of the key jokes in his repertoire. If you really want to see his mastery at work, skip this and check out one of his old television shows.

No No: A Dockumentary (2014)

NO NO: A DOCKUMENTARY  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jeff Radice
As a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Dock Ellis secured his place in baseball legend back in June 1970, when he took the mound against the San Diego Padres and became the first (and undoubtedly last) human being to throw a major-league no-hitter while tripping on LSD. It turns out there was a lot more to Dock's life than that, and that's what this documentary's about. As a young player, Ellis was cocky and flamboyant - "the Ali of baseball." He was assertive and outspoken in a way that earlier black players like Mays and Banks and Aaron couldn't be and weren't. As a pitcher, he was good but not overpowering, and erratic. He had a journeyman's career with a journeyman's share of ups and downs, enhanced, or maybe just amplified, by his claim that he was high on something every time he pitched. In fact, it was only after his time on the field ended, at about the point where you'd expect a drug-addicted, washed-up athlete to self-destruct, that Ellis found his life's calling, as a knowing and articulate rehab counselor. Radice, thankfully, doesn't try to whitewash Dock's dark side, and two ex-wives testify to his sometimes abusive behavior. But it's a remarkable life story, in which the no-no on acid is just one (admittedly entertaining) chapter. Ellis died of cirrhosis in 2008. He was 62.

Act of Violence (1949)

ACT OF VIOLENCE  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Fred Zinnemann
    Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh,
    Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter, Berry Kroeger
Van Heflin plays a World War Two vet who's living the American dream, with a successful business, a nice house and car, and a pretty young wife played by Janet Leigh. He's also got a secret going back to his time as a POW in Germany, and an old Army buddy (Robert Ryan) has been tracking him down, determined to kill him. This is film noir territory - at least that's where it ends up - with enough guilt and despair to give anybody a case of the black-dog blues, plus Mary Astor in fatalistic support as a woman with street connections who's seen it all and then some. Zinnemann's direction is crisp and efficient, and the climax, at night on a railroad platform, plays like a distorted twist on "High Noon". 

Spine Tingler (2007)

SPINE TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY 
    D: Jeffrey Schwartz                                   (2007)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
A documentary on the career of William Castle, the schlock filmmaker whose cinematic gifts to the world included "The Tingler", "Straight-Jacket", "13 Frightened Girls" and "House On Haunted Hill". Like a lot of B-movie directors, Castle knew how to get a picture made on the cheap, but his genius was in the field of gimmicky promotion. He knew his audience - mostly teenagers - and he knew how to fill the seats, especially when the seats were rigged with tiny vibrating buzzers timed to go off at a particular moment in the film. The gimmicks were never less than cheesy, and Castle's adolescent viewers never had less than a good time. There's nobody quite like Castle working today. In the age of viral Internet ad campaigns and big opening weekends, there couldn't be. The promotional landscape has changed. Of course, there's nobody quite like P.T. Barnum working today, either. And that's something William Castle would understand. 

13 Ghosts (1960)

13 GHOSTS  (1960)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Castle
    Charles Herbert, Donald Woods, Rosemary DeCamp,
    Jo Morrow, Martin Milner, Margaret Hamilton
A nice American family moves into a haunted house, and William Castle rolls out "Illusion-O", a process whereby special glasses worn at certain points in the film allow viewers to get a better look at the ghosts. Also, Margaret Hamilton plays a witch, or something like a witch, but she's not green this time around, and, anyway, the movie's in black and white. You can't take any of it seriously for a second, but it's not like moviegoers in 1960 didn't have a pretty good idea going in what they were going to get. It's William Castle, after all.

Martin Milner

(1931-2015)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: David O. Russell
    Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro,
    Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles, Dash Mihok
Because crazy people need love, too.

Scream (1996)

SCREAM  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Wes Craven
    Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard,
    David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Drew Barrymore
In the serene suburban community of Woodsboro, where apparently only white people live, a mad stalker in a mask inspired by Edvard Munch is practicing a ghoulish form of population control - terrorizing high-school kids on the telephone before carving them up with a butcher knife. A bloody, tongue-in-cheek slasher movie that takes most of its cues and references from other slasher movies. You don't expect logic or restraint in a picture like this, and you don't get it. (Well, okay, the nudity is restrained - there isn't any - though in a couple of scenes maybe there should be.) What you do get is an accomplished piece of work by one of the genre's original masters, a movie that can tell you point blank what's coming up next, as a joke, and then scare you with it anyway. Followed by a sequel. And another. And another.

Wes Craven

(1939-2015)

The Stratton Story (1949)

THE STRATTON STORY  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Sam Wood
    James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Morgan,
    Agnes Moorehead, Bill Williams, Jimmy Dykes
A movie based on the true story of Monty Stratton, a baseball player from rural Texas who became the best pitcher in the American League for a year or two, and then amazingly managed to pitch again after a hunting accident forced the amputation of his right leg. Predictable, inspirational Americana, sincerely intended and efficiently accomplished. The lanky (6'3") Stewart and the diminutive (5') Allyson have an easy, natural chemistry together, and Stewart does his own pitching in the baseball scenes.