The Magic Box (1951)

THE MAGIC BOX  (1951)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Boulting
    Robert Donat, Maria Schell, Margaret Johnston,
    Robert Beatty, Renée Asherson, Leo Genn,
    Marius Goring, Stanley Holloway, Michael Hordern, 
    Sidney James, Glynis Johns, Bessie Love, 
    Eric Portman, Dennis Price, Laurence Olivier,
    Michael Redgrave, Margaret Rutherford, Basil Sidney,
    Ernest Thesiger, Peter Ustinov, Kay Walsh, 
    Emlyn Williams, Googie Withers, Sybil Thorndyke
The argument over who invented moving pictures usually comes down to the rival claims of France (the Lumière brothers) and the U.S. (Thomas Edison). A third entry in the who-got-there-first sweepstakes is England's William Friese-Greene, who was tinkering with sprocket holes and celluloid in the late 19th century, too. There's some dispute over how practical Friese-Greene's inventions were, but he was definitely onto something. This sympathetic biopic leaves some gaps in Friese-Greene's story, like the time he spent in prison for bankruptcy, but it makes the case for Britain as film's possible birthplace. It's one of the movies Martin Scorsese saw as a kid that inspired him to become a filmmaker. 

Lucky Them (2013)

LUCKY THEM  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Megan Griffiths
    Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church, Ryan Eggold,
    Ahna O'Reilly, Oliver Platt, Nina Arianda, Walter Dalton
Toni Collette plays a music journalist in Seattle, reluctantly assigned to track down her ex, a legendary singer/songwriter who drove off and vanished ten years ago. It's one of those indie flicks that's neither as good as it should be nor as bad as it could be, a noble attempt that always seems to be straining for something it can't quite deliver. What's good is good, though, and that definitely includes Collette as a character who knows she's a little too old for the boy musicians she's still sleeping with, covering her insecurity with an assertive demeanor, a thick layer of cynicism, and an arsenal of tics and mannerisms that women of a certain age would do well to abandon. I saw it in Seattle at the Film Forum on Capitol Hill, and a lot of the movie was filmed around there, some of it just around the corner at the Comet Tavern, which made the viewing experience kind of cool. If you decide to give it a shot, be sure to stick around for a star cameo at the end of the journalist's journey.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY
    D: Charles Lamont                                  (1955)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor,
    Michael Ansara, Richard Deacon, Kurt Katch
Cross-talking idiots turn up in Egypt, and, of course, there's a mummy involved. Late Abbott and Costello and their last monster-movie spoof. By the end, there are three mummies running around, and one of them's Abbott. A lot of it's more silly than inspired - at their best, A & C were silly and inspired - but the pick-and-shovel routine is classic Abbott and Costello. There's a Three Stooges reference late in the film that's both playful and ironic. The Stooges at that point were on the verge of a late-career resurgence, while Bud and Lou were running out of time.

The Silence (2010)

THE SILENCE  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Baran bo Odar
    Sebastian Blomberg, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Katrin Sass,
    Burghart Klaussner, Ulrich Thomsen, Anna Lena Klenke
On July 8, 1986, a girl is raped and murdered. Her bicycle and belongings are dumped in a wheat field. Her body is dumped in a nearby lake. More than 20 years later, to the day, another girl goes missing, under what appear to be identical circumstances. The investigation that follows involves (among others) a retired cop who failed to solve the first murder, a colleague who's still at lose ends following the death of his wife, the mother of the original victim, and a witness to the original crime. It's a trip to the dark side for all of them, and if it's not always a model of narrative logic, maybe that's because its characters aren't perfect, either, their flawed perceptions and choices setting up a resolution that's as ironic as it is sobering. Nobody comes out of this unscathed.

The Hatchet Man (1932)

THE HATCHET MAN  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: William Wellman
    Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Dudley Digges,
    Leslie Fenton, Tully Marshall, J. Carrol Naish
A pre-Code oddity starring Edward G. Robinson as an enforcer (a literal "hatchet man") in a tong war. Loretta Young plays his beloved wife, who runs away with a younger man and ends up working as a concubine in an opium den. Robinson doesn't look remotely Chinese, but when he picks up a hatchet, watch out. 

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY  (2015)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Sam Taylor-Johnson
    Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle,
    Victor Rasuk, Eloise Mumford, Marcia Gay Harden
With graduation fast approaching, a sweet young college student hooks up with a dour but handsome millionaire who introduces her to his world of cold, gleaming affluence and a wide selection of ropes, cuffs, floggers and riding crops. This is based on a popular erotic novel, and it's another one of those movies where you slog your way through much of its running time waiting to get to the naughty bits. The story has possibilities in the shifting negotiation between a dominant and a submissive over the conditions and rules of the game. The problem is that you never learn enough about these characters for either of them to establish a convincing human identity. The woman at least shows signs of potential, even if some of her choices don't make much sense. The millionaire's just a stick, a charmless control freak with no personality at all. So he's got issues and secrets and a past. Who cares? He's a fucking bore. And speaking of fucking, another problem with "Shades of Grey" is that the sex scenes aren't explicit enough. It's not that you can't figure out what's going on in them. It's that they're what the movie's about, the reason it exists. I can see where caving to the restrictive demands of an R rating might make sense commercially, but this is a piece that pretty much demands an NC-17, or maybe just no rating at all. That wouldn't make it a better movie necessarily. But at least it'd be a more honest one.

$ (1971)

$  (1971)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Richard Brooks
    Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Gert Frobe,
    Scott Brady, Robert Webber, Wolfgang Kieling
Warren Beatty plays a security expert who engineers an elaborate bank robbery and then goes on the run with the loot. So there's a heist and a chase. And a giggly blonde hooker played by Goldie Hawn.  And a guy who always wears sunglasses. And a pompous bank president played by Goldfinger himself. And a few trains. And a bunch of safe-deposit keys. And a couple of suitcases. And some baseballs filled with heroin. A slick, diverting caper in which Brooks lets the tension build up slowly and only the people who deserve to be robbed get robbed. Toward the end, it's just Beatty trying to make his escape, on foot, through city streets and tunnels and railroad yards, and out into the country, into the snow - a coincidental reference to "McCabe & Mrs. Miller", released the same year. Quincy Jones composed the pulsing, off-kilter musical score. AKA "Dollars". 

August: Osage County (2013)

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Wells
    Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper,
    Julianne Nicholson, Ewan McGregor, Juliette Lewis,
    Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, Dermot Mulroney,
    Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Misty Upham
Portrait of a family coming together and falling apart. Meryl Streep plays Violet Weston, the matriarch, a needy, vicious old woman with a mouth full of cancer and unfiltered profanity. The reason for the get-together is the funeral of Vi's husband Beverly (Sam Shepard), an alcoholic poet who has committed suicide, probably in self-defense. The extended family includes Vi's three daughters, their past, present and would-be partners, her sister and brother-in-law, a nephew and a granddaughter. If sharing an enclosed space with Vi isn't enough to set everybody on edge, it's August and it's hotter than hell in rural Oklahoma. This was based on a play, and a lot of it plays like something crafted for delivery from the stage to the back seats. The actors kind of go with that, most of them, and it works because they're good enough to pull it off. It's like "Nebraska" minus the understatement, another movie about the relationships between adult children and aging parents. But Bruce Dern's character in "Nebraska", beneath all his crotchetyness, was at least recognizably human, a guy who by nature asked nothing from nobody and expected little in return. Streep's character here is the opposite of that. She's a truly horrible person, hiding her vulnerability behind a curtain of bile and cigarette smoke. Nobody escapes her abuse, and her capacity for cruelty is limitless. By the end, the others have all pretty much had it, and one by one they come to the same conclusion: It's better to be without a family than to be part of a family like this.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

MR. & MRS. SMITH  (1941)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Alfred Hitchcock
    Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Jack Carson
A Hitchcock comedy about a bickering couple trying to patch things up at a ski resort. The leads are up to it, but the script doesn't give them much. The results are pleasant but slight. 

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: James Gunn
    Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista,
    Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Lee Pace, 
    Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou,
    John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, Benicio Del Toro
At last, a superhero comic-book action movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, an intergalactic adventure in which the heroes bicker and complain and insult each other and generally act like idiots as they race around the universe in search of "the orb," a softball-sized sphere with planet-destroying powers. There are five members of this misfit team. A thief (Chris Pratt) with a fetish for the pop hits of the '70s and '80s. A muscular, scarified giant (Dave Bautista) bent on revenge. A hot-looking, green-skinned warrior babe (Zoe Saldana). A raccoon (Bradley Cooper). And a tree trunk (Vin Diesel). I'm not making this up. It's better if you don't try too hard to figure out who all the other characters are. They're not very well defined, and there are too many of them. The story's like that, too, pretty much, fast and funny and ten times too busy. None of that matters, really. We're not talking about Hector and Achilles and the Trojan War here. We're talking about a make-believe war over a fantasy planet, and a tree trunk and a green-skinned warrior babe and a scene-stealing, wise-guy raccoon. The top money-making movie of 2014.

The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936)

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1937  (1936)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mitchell Leisen
    Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen, 
    Shirley Ross, Ray Milland, Martha Raye,
    Bob Burns, Frank Forest, Sam Hearn
Gracie's the owner of a company that manufactures golf balls. Benny's the producer of a radio variety show looking for a sponsor. Shirley Ross plays a girl from the sticks whose vocal skills are a perceived threat to the show's headliner, a crooner managed by agent Ray Milland. The movie's inconsequential, but it's not hard to watch. George (of course) plays Gracie's straight man, but in a movie like this, anybody who's not Gracie is playing Gracie's straight man. 

Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen (2012)

FINAL CUT: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN  (2012)
    D: György Pálfi                                                 ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
A true labor of love and probably the ultimate compilation movie, telling the story of a relationship through encounters and breakups, jealousy and lust, love and pain and grief and joy and everything in between. It's made up entirely of film clips, hundreds of them, each only a few seconds long, and remarkably the story works, both on its own terms and as a personalized narrative drawn from the moviegoing memory of each individual viewer. Getting to see it in a theater could be tricky. Pálfi secured no clearances for any of the music or images he used, and the movie can only be watched legally in the U.S. on a handful of nonprofit screens. Of course, it's available on YouTube.

The Trail of '98 (1928)

THE TRAIL OF '98  (1928)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Clarence Brown
    Dolores Del Rio, Ralph Forbes, Harry Carey,
    Karl Dane, Tully Marshall, George Cooper
A silent epic in which adventurous characters from all over the map head for the Klondike, hoping to strike it rich in the gold fields. Few of them do. The story's secondary to the harsh depiction of life in late-19th-century Alaska. It's enough to make you glad you didn't live there then, but Dolores Del Rio could make anybody reconsider.