Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Thomas Vinterberg
    Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge,
    Michael Sheen, Juno Temple, Jessica Barden
I'm guessing here, but it seems like "Far From the Madding Crowd" would make a great date movie, what with Carey Mulligan as plucky, headstrong heroine Bathsheba Everdene and dreamy hunk Matthias Schoenaerts as one of the three guys who want to marry her. It's set in rural England in the 19th century, and the three would-be suitors are Schoenaerts as an honest shepherd who Bathsheba doesn't appreciate nearly enough, a wealthy neighbor (Michael Sheen) who owns all the land Bathsheba doesn't, and a cavalier cavalier (Tom Sturrridge), who Bathsheba should know better than to get involved with, which, of course, she does. I've never read the Thomas Hardy novel, but this feels like a condensation, with details left out of the narrative that you suspect the book would fill in. It's lovely to look at, though, with all those pastoral landscapes along the seacoast, and there's plenty of wistful longing and a surprising amount of tongue-in-cheek humor to go with the tragedy and romance. Try watching it with a date sometime. See what you think. 

Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

REAP THE WILD WIND  (1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Cecil B. DeMille
    Ray Milland, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, 
    Raymond Massey, Robert Preston, Susan Hayward,
    Charles Bickford, Louise Beavers, Martha O'Driscoll
Two-fisted adventure with John Wayne as a 19th-century sea captain who runs afoul of pirates off the Florida Keys. Ray Milland plays a maritime lawyer, Wayne's would-be boss and rival for the hand of feisty Paulette Goddard. Raymond Massey's a scavenging cutthroat who's a lawyer and a pirate both, to which some would say, what's the difference? Dramatically this is a little over the top (it's DeMille), but the color cinematography is striking and the miniature work looks pretty good. Goddard gets to show what she might've done playing Scarlett O'Hara, and the climax has Wayne and Milland in heavy, bulky diving suits battling a giant squid.

Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)

TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jeffrey Schwartz
When I first heard there was a documentary coming out about Tab Hunter, my reaction was probably like a lot of other people. I didn't know the guy was still alive. Well, he is, and in this movie he narrates his own life story, a golden-boy movie star (and closeted homosexual)  who survived the Hollywood meat grinder and the total collapse of his career, staged a remarkable, unlikely comeback with the help of John Waters, and appears here in his mid-80s looking tan, fit and comfortably retired. Robert Wagner, Debbie Reynolds, Don Murray, George Takei and Clint Eastwood are among the witnesses, but the star of the piece is definitely Tab Hunter, candid, unpretentious and out of the closet, giving the performance of his life - as himself.

The Wizard of Mars (1965)

THE WIZARD OF MARS  (1965)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: David L. Hewitt
    Roger Gentry, Vic McGee, Jerry Rannow,
    Eve Bernhardt, John Carradine
Four astronauts crash-land on Mars and follow a golden road to a strange city where a giant disembodied head explains the mysteries to time to them. You know how some movies look like they're just made for midnight viewing? This one's more like three a.m. and a couple of bong hits. Guessing which cast member plays the title role shouldn't be too difficult. Alternate titles: "Alien Massacre", "Horrors of the Red Planet".

The 2015 Scobie Awards

Picture: "Suffragette"
Actress: Nina Hoss, "Phoenix"
Actor: Johnny Depp, "Black Mass"
Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins, "A Brilliant Young Mind"
Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies"
Cameo: Geraldine Chaplin, "The Forbidden Room"
Ensemble: "Spotlight"
Animal: Masuka the Cat, 
                "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night"
Director: Ken Loach, "Jimmy's Hall"
Cinematography: Bobby Bukowski, "Time Out of Mind"
Musical Score: Tom Holkenborg, "Black Mass"
Foreign Language Film: "Love Among the Ruins"
B Movie: "Zombeavers"
Documentary: "Amy"
Animated Movie: "Song of the Sea"
Revival: "Sherlock Holmes"
Title Sequence: "Mr. Turner"
Trailer: "Son of Saul"
Print Ad: "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night"
Career Achievement Award: Kevin Brownlow

Lava (2014)

LAVA  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: James Ford Murphy
An animated short about a lonely volcano who pines for a mate. Which can take roughly forever, if you're a volcano. Good thing the filmmakers didn't try to tell the story in real geological time. Aloha.

The Rising of the Moon (1957)

THE RISING OF THE MOON  (1957)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Ford
    Tyrone Power, Noel Purcell, Cyril Cusack,
    Jack MacGowran, Jimmy O'Dea, Tony Quinn,
    Kevin Casey, Maureen Potter, Denis O'Dea, 
    Frank Lawton, Donal Donnelly, Maureen Cusack
Ask any casual student of film to name a John Ford movie set in Ireland, and you might get "The Informer" or "The Quiet Man", but probably not this one, a trilogy of short pieces acted by Dublin's Abbey Players and shot on location in black and white. In the first story, Noel Purcell plays a man of limited means whose stubborn refusal to pay a fine (or let anybody else pay if for him) is going to land him in jail. The second is a comic episode about what happens when a train making a whistle stop keeps getting delayed at the station. The third, set during the Troubles and composed mostly of tilt shots, has the members of a theater company engaged in a plot to free a condemned rebel from the gallows. All three play on Ford's dual capacity for corn and darkness: fatalism and blarney mixing it up, sharing a jar and laying claim to joint possession of the Irish soul.

3 Hearts (2014)

3 HEARTS  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Benoit Jacquot
    Benoit Poelvoorde, Charlotte Gainsbourg,
    Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve
It's late at night and a middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit has just missed the last train back to Paris. The man looks tired and desperate and lost. He crosses the street to a cafe that's about to close and orders a bottle of mineral water. A woman comes in to buy a pack of cigarettes. The man follows her out the door and down the sidewalk, catching up with her and starting a conversation. This is exactly the kind of guy a woman alone on the street late at night would get away from fast. But she doesn't and the two of them end up talking and smoking the night away, walking the city streets. In the morning she sees him off on the train and they agree to meet up Friday afternoon at five o'clock by the fountain in the Tulieres Garden. On Friday afternoon, the woman shows up but the man doesn't. Which doesn't quite add up, either, because the woman is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and it's hard to imagine any straight guy with a measurable pulse failing to show up for a date with Charlotte Gainsbourg in the Tulieres Garden on Friday afternoon. Well, okay, the man's had a heart attack, but still. That missed connection will have profound consequences for the man, the woman and the woman's sister, who the man will soon meet and marry. The story's full of irrational choices, implausible occurrences and unlikely coincidences. And even in a French movie, the notion that these two classy women would both fall head over heels for this shabby, sketchy guy defies belief. With Chiara Mastroianni playing Gainsbourg's sister and Catherine Deneuve playing their mother, the movie's not hard to look at. You just wish it made more sense.

Candy (1968)

CANDY  (1968)  ¢ ¢
    D: Christian Marquand
    Ewa Aulin, Richard Burton, Walter Matthau,
    James Coburn, Marlon Brando, Ringo Starr,
    John Huston, Charles Aznavour, John Astin
An innocent girl embarks on a series of sexual adventures in an episodic train wreck of a movie based on the once-taboo novel by Mason Hoffenberg and Terry Southern. Richard Burton plays a boozy poet. Walter Matthau's a saber-rattling Cold War general. James Coburn's a brain surgeon who knows how to put the theater into operating theater. Charles Aznavour plays a hunchback. Ringo Starr's a Mexican gardener. Marlon Brando's a crackpot guru. All of them want to get into Candy's pants, and they do, but you never really see very much. It's a mind-boggling mess, but a one-of-a-kind cult item, silly, self-indulgent, shamelessly overacted and spectacularly unfunny. If it's not Brando's most embarrassing moment on film, it should be. Buck Henry wrote the screenplay and, not coincidentally, makes a cameo appearance as a lunatic. 

Quote File / Take 8

Some lines from the movies of Alan Rickman:

"Just because something's fixed, doesn't mean it
  can't be broken"

  Rickman in "Blow Dry"

"We spend too much time thinking about the end of 
  the world. It isn't going to happen today, I promise 
  you. Not before lunch."

  Rickman in "Close My Eyes"

"Put down the gun and give me my detonators."

  Rickman in "Die Hard"

"That's it, then. Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers 
  and orphans. No more merciful beheadings. And 
  call off Christmas."

  Rickman in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"

"I was an actor once, damn it. Now look at me."

  Rickman in "Galaxy Quest"

Blow Dry (2001)

BLOW DRY  (2001)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Paddy Breathnach
    Alan Rickman, Natasha Richardson, Rachel Griffiths,
    Josh Hartnet, Bill Nighy, Rachel Leigh Cook,
    Rosemary Harris, Hugh Bonneville, Heidi Klum
This is like the "Strictly Ballroom" of hairstyling movies (a subgenre if there ever was one), with Rickman, Richardson, Griffiths and Hartnett playing the hometown heroes in the all-England salon competition. It's a crowd-pleaser, for sure, not much more, maybe, but certainly nothing less. If you don't stick around to see the makeover Alan Rickman performs on Rachel Griffiths, you'll really be missing something.

Alan Rickman

(1946-2016)

The Martian (2015)

THE MARTIAN  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ridley Scott
    Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig,
    Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Michael Peña,
    Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor,
    Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover
Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut who's stranded on Mars when a storm comes up and the rest of his research team, believing he's dead, leaves for Earth without him. Now his job is to survive on a desolate planet, while waiting for a rescue mission that could be years away, if it comes at all. As luck would have it, Watney's a botanist, and before long, he's growing (and self-fertilizing) a healthy crop of potatoes. He's also apparently a crack mechanical engineer who can improvise whatever he needs out of whatever's available. (One thing that's available in large quantities is duct tape.) Finally, he's a wise guy and a little bit crazy, and those things don't hurt, either, in a situation like this. There's a ton of exposition here, but Damon lays it out with such cocky self-assurance that the script never feels weighed down by it. The science is fairly accurate - at least that's what I've heard - and in an escapist, mass-market package like this one, it's nice to see thinking being celebrated. This is where "Apollo 13" meets "Gravity". It becomes a little less gripping when the story expands beyond the Matt-on-Mars stuff, but as a human-scale survival adventure - "Robinson Crusoe" on the red planet - "The Martian" delivers the goods.

Basquiat (1996)

BASQUIAT  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Julian Schnabel
    Jefrey Wright, Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Hopper,
    David Bowie, Claire Forlani, Gary Oldman, 
    Michael Wincott, Parker Posey, Christopher Walken, 
    Elina Lowensohn, Willem Dafoe, Courtney Love
The short life of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a painter and graffiti artist from Haiti who made his mark on the New York art scene as a protégé of Andy Warhol before dying from a heroin overdose at 28. It's episodic but not random, a portrait of the artist in brush strokes and swatches, a word or line here, a splash of paint there, and the finished product holds together surprisingly well. It's a knowing look at the art world and the kinds of people it attracts, with a charismatic performance by Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat and a lot of familiar faces in the supporting roles. David Bowie's effectively cast as Warhol, and you get a rare opportunity to hear what Dennis Hopper does with a French accent. 

David Bowie

(1947-2016)