The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN  (1934)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Alexander Korda
    Douglas Fairbanks, Merle Oberon, Binnie Barnes,
    Benita Hume, Melville Cooper, Joan Gardner
Douglas Fairbanks closed out his career playing the legendary lover, who finds himself in middle age competing against his own outsized reputation. Fairbanks looks agile enough, but the physical action is limited compared with his work in silent films and the movie never really comes to life. The pacing is ponderous and the comic bits land with a clunk. Fairbanks died five years later of a heart attack. He was 56. 

The Green Inferno (2013)

THE GREEN INFERNO  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Eli Roth
    Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Aaron Burns, 
    Sky Ferreira, Kirby Bliss Blanton, 
    Magda Apanowicz, Daryl Sabara
Eli Roth's homage to the Italian cannibal movies of the '70s and '80s tracks a group of environmental activists to the Peruvian Amazon, where (naturally) their plane crashes deep in the jungle. The lucky ones die in the crash. The others become the guests of a tribe of headhunters and discover to their horror that the natives aren't restless as much as they are hungry. The largest of the environmentalists soon becomes an entrée - you get to watch him being carved up, seasoned, baked and devoured - while the others, confined to a pigpen, wait their turn. My favorite part was when the captives try to escape by stuffing one of their dead comrades with marijuana, hoping to distract the cannibals by getting them stoned and figuring that logically she'll be on the menu next. Sure enough, the cannibals cook and eat her and get all giggly and high, and it looks like the plan might work, except for the one thing the prisoners failed to take into account: Now the cannibals have the munchies. See? Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. The lucky ones died in the crash. 

Salome (1953)

SALOME  (1953)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Dieterle
    Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton,
    Judith Anderson, Cedric Hardwick, Alan Badel,
    Basil Sydney, Maurice Schwartz, Arnold Moss
A sanctimonious biblical epic derived from what little is known about history's most famous striptease artist, the one whose reward for a look at her charms was a head on a plate. Charles Laughton plays the lecherous King Herod, and even he sometimes looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. The movie's really just a long, long lead-up to Rita's veil-dropping dance, which is every bit as discreet as you'd expect it to be, coming in a mainstream product out of 1950s Hollywood. 

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)

KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Brett Morgen
Sometime after I saw this movie, it occurred to me that I'd watched three documentaries in the space of a month, one each for Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and Chris Farley, and it made me think I wouldn't mind seeing somebody's life scroll by who didn't do way too much dope and die way too young. Take a quick glance at Cobain's biography, and it's not hard to see a few parallels to John Lennon. Both were emotionally sensitive and came from troubled families. Both were multitalented artists, adept at music, wordplay and doodling. Both reached an absurd level of fame in their early 20s, and both came under the influence of a domineering woman. There were differences, too, and they were crucial. John had an acerbic wit which he honed into a highly effective defense mechanism. Kurt appears to have had no defenses at all. John's soul mate, Yoko Ono, brought balance to his life in a way few would've predicted. Courtney Love, to whom Kurt was visibly devoted, was a walking horror show, and worst of all, a fellow junkie. Some people just fall in love with the wrong people, and there's nothing you can do about that. One of this movie's most disturbing scenes shows Kurt and Courtney goofing off, imitating addicts pretending to act normal while jonesing for their next fix. Even harder to watch is the footage of Kurt, zonked and nodding off, holding his daughter, Frances Bean, who's getting her hair cut. From the beginning, Cobain seems predestined not to live a long life, and his fate was pretty much sealed when he found out how much he liked heroin. You can't help wishing he'd had more time, to write more songs and do more doodling. But it's not hard to see why it didn't work out that way. 

The Big Clock (1948)

THE BIG CLOCK  (1948)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Farrow
    Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan,
    George Macready, Elsa Lanchester, Harry Morgan
Ray Milland plays the editor of a crime magazine assigned to lead a murder investigation in which all the circumstantial evidence points to him. He's got one or two things to feel guilty about, anyway, and the more he tries to cover his tracks, the more he can feel the noose growing tighter around his neck. Also, he's in a film noir, so what hope is there? Charles Laughton plays the magazine's malevolent publisher. Elsa Lanchester walks off with a couple of scenes as a batty artist. Harry Morgan, whose voice was one of his most distinctive assets, clings to the shadows as Laughton's loyal henchman, and doesn't speak a word. 

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

JUPITER ASCENDING  (2015)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski
    Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne,
    Sean Bean, Tuppence Middleton, Douglas Booth,
    Doona Bae, Christina Cole, Terry Gilliam
Mila Kunis plays an illegal alien, born to a Russian mother on a container ship in the middle of the Atlantic, now employed cleaning toilets in the U.S.A. Imagine her surprise when she's abducted by a hunky space warrior (Channing Tatum) and learns she's a queen on a distant planet and in line to inherit the earth. Tatum, it turns out, is a sort of intergalactic werewolf and he used to have wings, but he lost them when he killed somebody he wasn't supposed to kill. So now he's equipped with these high-tech, anti-gravity boots that allow him to zip around like a kid on a set of jet-powered roller blades. Is this still making sense? Kunis, whose dramatic arsenal does not include vulnerability, repeatedly gets herself into situations where she's vulnerable and has to be rescued. You keep waiting for her to pull a Michelle Rodriguez and start kicking ass, but it takes an awful long time for her to do that. Terry Gilliam turns up briefly as an eccentric bureaucrat with an impressive collection of steampunk toys, and the movie's not too far off from something Gilliam might do himself: a relentlessly dazzling visual spectacle that could do with a little more narrative coherence. 

Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)

LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH  (1928)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Herbert Brenon
    Lon Chaney, Loretta Young, Nils Asther,
    Bernard Siegel, Cissy Fitzgerald, Gwen Lee
Chaney plays a clown who takes in a foundling who grows into a beautiful woman with whom he falls in love. Needless to say, there's no happy ending for the clown. Highlight: Chaney and Nils Asther going to the same psychologist, one because he can't stop crying, the other because he can't stop laughing. There's more old-school miming in this than in most other silent films. It's effectively a celebration of the art of mime. 15-year-old Loretta Young, in her first significant movie role, plays the girl. 

Scoop (2006)

SCOOP  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Woody Allen
    Scarlett Johansson, Woody Allen, Hugh Jackman,
    Ian McShane, Romola Garai, Charles Dance,
    Fenella Woolgar, John Standing, Richard Johnson
For a while there early in the millennium, it seemed like all of Woody Allen's movies were about people trying to get away with murder. And for a year or two in there, it seemed like they all starred Scarlett Johansson. This movie covers both bases, with Scarett playing an aspiring journalist determined to crack a serial murder case, with the help of a stage magician played by Allen and a ghost played by Ian McShane. Woody's the father figure in this. (Good thing.) Scarlett's romantic interest is Hugh Jackman in a role that seems tailor-made for Hugh Grant. The mystery's good enough to get by, but what really carries it are the performances and (of course) the script. There's a funny, affectionate combativeness to the exchanges between Scarlett and Woody - they act like they've been working together forever - and the English locations are lovely. And where else but in a Woody Allen movie would the end come with Allen as the Great Splendini performing card tricks for his fellow passengers on the boat crossing the River Styx?

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS  (1967)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Mark Robson
    Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate,
    Susan Hayward, Paul Burke, Tony Scotti,
    Martin Milner, Lee Grant, Joey Bishop
Glamorous women and the drugs they do, from the novel by Jacqueline Susann. Barbara Parkins plays a girl from small-town New England who moves to New York and lands a job at a talent agency. Patty Duke plays a hot young singer with a ton of talent and ambition and an unfortunate fondness for pills. Sharon Tate plays a no-talent actress who has some bad luck and ends up making nudie flicks in France. It's pure trash, but Hayward gives it some bite as an aging diva (a part originally intended for Judy Garland), and Duke attacks her role like a pit bull with rabies and pretty much rips it to shreds. 

Patty Duke

(1946-2016)