Paper Towns (2015)

PAPER TOWNS  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jake Schreier
    Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne, Austin Abrams,
    Justice Smith, Halston Sage, Jaz Sinclair
With prom just around the corner and graduation not long after that, a girl named Margo exacts some revenge on those she believes have wronged her, with the help of a classmate who lives across the street. When she turns up missing the next day, her accomplice and a few close friends embark on a mission to track her down, following a series of cryptic clues she's left behind. This defies belief at almost every turn, but I'm not sure how much that matters. It's a coming-of-age fantasy, the kind of story a lovestruck teenager might invent for himself and imagine playing a part in. Cara Delevingne plays the elusive Margo, and she's just the kind of girl you maybe knew in high school, who would drive you crazy on the way to breaking your heart. But the real story is with the young amateur detectives, who all grow a little 0r learn something as they try to solve the case. Schreier and his young cast do a nice job of capturing what the last days and weeks of high school feel like, when it hits you that however good or bad or mixed-up the experience has been, it's over, you're moving on, and whatever it is you're moving on to, nothing will ever be the same. 

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

THE PINK PANTHER STRIKES AGAIN  (1976)

    D: Blake Edwards                                           ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Lesley-Anne Down,

    Burt Kwouk, Colin Blakely, Leonard Rossiter

Ex-Chief Inspector Dreyfuss escapes from a lunatic asylum, appropriates a doomsday machine, vaporizes the UN Building, and blackmails the world's most powerful governments into a plot to assassinate Inspector Clouseau. Just watching Peter Sellers vault off a set of parallel bars and down an open stairwell is enough to leave you rolling on the floor. Better make sure your floor is clean before you watch this. 

Burt Kwouk 

(1930-2016)

Lured (1947)

LURED  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Douglas Sirk
    George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn,
    Alan Mobray, Cedric Hardwick, Boris Karloff,
    George Zucco, Alan Napier, Robert Coote
Look up the word "cad" in the dictionary, and the surprise is that the definition does not simply read "George Sanders." It's hard to find a biographical reference to Sanders that doesn't contain the word, and Sanders made a career playing insolent, condescending characters. He even titled his 1960 autobiography "Memoirs of a Professional Cad". So when his character in "Lured" states matter-of-factly, "I am an unmitigated cad," you believe it. The word fits perfectly. The movie's a murder mystery and Sanders plays a London theatrical producer. Charles Coburn's a police inspector who recruits a dance-hall girl (Lucille Ball) to go undercover to catch a serial killer. Lucy falls for the producer who turns out to be the prime suspect. Did he do it? I won't tell, but you can't help being suspicious. He's a cad, after all. He even says so. And he's played by George Sanders.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014)

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY  (2014)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Peter Strickland
    Sidse Babett Knudsen, Chiara D'Anna, Fatma Mohamed
Lepidoptera and lesbian love in a relationship drama about two women, one dominant and the other submissive, and the ritualized games they play. It's all very arty and elegant, and the movie keeps you guessing, as their relationship evolves, about which partner is really in control. You'd expect it to be more graphic, but there's no nudity, and nothing explicit takes place, at least on screen. Some might be intrigued by that. Others could find the Weather Channel more exciting. It's a matter of personal taste. The credits list the artists responsible for perfume and lingerie, and there's even a listing at the end for "human toilet consultant." You don't see that on screen, either, thankfully, but it does figure into the story a little, so I guess it's good to know somebody went to the trouble of doing the research and getting it right. 

The Hindenburg (1975)

THE HINDENBURG  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Robert Wise
    George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, William Atherton,
    Charles Durning, Roy Thinnes, Gig Young,
    Burgess Meredith, Rene Auberjonois, Richard Dysart
Blimp of fools. In 1937, the world's most famous luxury airship leaves Berlin for Lakehurst, New Jersey, with a bomb on board. Will security officer George C. Scott uncover the plot before it's too late? If you've done your history homework, you know the answer to that one. Released during the golden age of big-budget disaster movies, this is one of the better ones, based on a real event, with the mayhem and melodrama in the care of Robert Wise. The passenger manifest includes Anne Bancroft as a pot-smoking countess, Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois as card sharks, Gig Young as a businessman with a deadline to meet, and Charles Durning as the pilot whose job is to keep the zeppelin in the air till it reaches the East Coast. The sound and visual effects won Oscars, and the fiery climax, shot in black and white and incorporating newsreel footage of the real Hindenburg's disintegration, is horrifying. What caused the Hindenburg disaster remains uncertain. Sabotage is one possibility. 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Sporgersi

Casablanca (1942)

CASABLANCA  (1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Michael Curtiz
    Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid,
    Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet,
    Dooley Wilson, Conrad Veidt, S.Z. Sakall,
    Leonid Kinskey, Madeleine LeBeau, Joy Page
    John Qualen, Marcel Dalio, Helmut Dantine
" . . . We'll always have Paris . . . You despise me, don't you? 
. . . I came to Casablanca for the waters . . . Round up the usual suspects . . . Play "La Marseillaise" . . . Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine 
. . . I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray. You wore blue . . . There are certain sections of New York, major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade . . . I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one . . . If it's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York? . . . I stick my neck out for nobody . . . Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By" . . . Here's looking at you, kid . . . Find Mr. Laszlo's luggage and put it on the plane . . . "

Madeleine LeBeau

(1923-2016)

Hoodwinked! (2005)

HOODWINKED!  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech
Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, a would-be Paul Bunyan and Granny herself all come under suspicion when somebody from the pop-up pages of Mother Goose tries to steal all the goodies in the forest. An animated take on "Rashomon" that should amuse kids and grownups both, though maybe not for the same reasons. The frog detective and the hyper-caffeinated squirrel stand out in the fairy-tale cast, and one of the villain's henchmen conspicuously resembles a former governor of California. Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, Jim Belushi and David Ogden Stiers are among the voices.

Death Sentence (1974)

DEATH SENTENCE  (1974)  ¢ ¢
    D: E.W. Swackhammer
    Cloris Leachman, Laurence Luckinbill, Nick Nolte,
    William Schallert, Alan Oppenheimer, Peter Hobbs
Cloris Leachman plays a juror in a murder trial who starts to suspect that the real killer isn't the accused, but her own husband. A mystery that gives away its main secret in the first five minutes and then waits more than an hour for Leachman's character to catch up. William Schallert as the defense attorney comes off the best in this. It's mostly a good cast wasted. Young Nick Nolte plays the defendant. Made for TV.

William Schallert

(1922-2016)

Carried Away (1996)

CARRIED AWAY  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Bruno Barreto
    Dennis Hopper, Amy Irving, Amy Locane,
    Hal Holbrook, Julie Harris, Gary Busey
Bruno Barreto's screen version of Jim Harrison's spare 1976 novel "Farmer", about a middle-aged farmer/schoolteacher named Joseph and his relationships with two women: a 17-year-old student who basically seduces him, and a fellow teacher, his best friend's widow, who he's been in love with and involved with for years. Hopper, playing a character who's not completely psycho, is quite good in the lead, and Irving plays his longtime lover with down-to-earth passion and grace. Unfortunately, there's no chemistry at all between Hopper and Locane. It's hard to imagine what he sees in her beyond her luscious, golden-girl body, or why she'd be the least bit interested in him. The time and place are nonspecific - Harrison's book was set in northern Michigan, while the movie was shot in Texas - and some of the visual cues, like Hopper's pipe and bib overalls, Irving's reading glasses and Locane's schoolgirl dresses, are more than a little obvious. Hopper and Irving get about as naked in this - literally and figuratively - as you're ever going to see them. If the movie has a soul, it's in their performances. 

Jim Harrison

(1937-2016)

Mr. Holmes (2015)

MR.HOLMES  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Bill Condon
    Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker,
    Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Philip Davis
Ian McKellen plays Sherlock Holmes at 93, puttering around his house in the country, keeping a few hives of bees, and trying to probe his failing memory for clues to his final mystery, the case that drove him into retirement 30 years before. He's urged on in this task by a young boy, his housekeeper's son, and flashbacks show a younger Holmes (also played by McKellen) at work on the case that still baffles him in advanced old age. Laura Linney plays the no-nonsense housekeeper, who appears a little unsure about how much time her pre-teen son and this confirmed old bachelor should be spending together. The flashback mystery is serviceable, but this is really the Ian McKellen show. He's got the slow, shuffling gait, wobbly voice and sagging facial muscles of a very old man down cold, and in the scenes where his concentration wanders off, there's a sense of quiet panic. He knows he's slowly losing the one thing that more than anything else defines him: his intellect. When at one point Holmes falls out of bed, you fear he'll never get up again. Hips break, you know, and even great minds go blank. Shit happens at 93. To all of us. Even to Sherlock Holmes.

Flashback: Channel 13

    My folks bought our first television set in 1954, when I was seven. It was a black-and-white Admiral with a 17" screen and a rabbit-ears antenna. 
    I don't remember what the first movie was I watched on it. Probably some B western from a previous decade. Sunset Carson or early John Wayne. One of the local stations would show those things on weekdays in the late afternoon, prime time for schoolboys like me who had just gotten home: too early for supper to be ready, but not too early to put off doing your homework. 
    The Three Stooges took over that time slot eventually and I watched a lot of their movies, too, the raft of two-reelers they cranked out at Columbia in the '30s and '40s. I even liked the ones with Shemp in them, but I might've been in the minority there. 
    There were Disney movies on Sunday nights sometimes, and I probably caught some of the films my parents were watching, but I don't really remember them. 
    The most significant cinematic discovery the Admiral and I made together, the one that affected my entire movie-watching life, was Channel 13 in Rockford, Illinois. All television signals were subject to atmospherics back then - no cable, no satellites - and the only time we could pull in Channel 13 in Madison was real late at night. Even then, the picture was never very clear, obscured by what we called "snowballs" - interference due to the distance that prevented a decent picture from coming in. 
    Channel 13 showed the best old movies. I first saw "The Bride of Frankenstein" in Channel 13. And "Tarzan and His Mate". Spencer Tracy in "Men of Boys Town". Barbara Stanwyck in "Lady of Burlesque". I watched Henry Fonda risk his life as a lineman in "Slim", and Jimmy Stewart do his lonely filibuster in "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington", and Jimmy Cagney go screaming to the electric chair in "Angels With Dirty Faces". Not very daring by later standards maybe, but not exactly kids' movies, either. They had an edge to them and I was intrigued by that. I was hooked. 
    If there's a moment I could point to when my life-long love for motion pictures began, that was it: at the age of 10 or 11, staying up till the wee hours all by myself, watching Boris Karloff and Johnny Weissmuller through the snowballs on Channel 13. 
    Looking back on it now, I don't know why my parents even let me do that. But I'm glad they did.

Human Highway (1982)

HUMAN HIGHWAY  (1982)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Bernard Shakey, Dean Stockwell
    Neil Young, Russ Tamblyn, Dean Stockwell,
    Dennis Hopper, Charlotte Stewart, Sally Kirkland
Every once in a while, Neil Young takes a little time off from touring and recording, digs into his subconscious with the help of whatever substances are at hand, gets a bunch of his friends together and makes a movie. The results can be goofy, passionate, ragged, eccentric and (usually) off the wall. "Human Highway" is something Neil cooked up in the early 1980s, about a small community hanging out in and around a diner and gas station in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Neil and Russ Tamblyn play the pump jockeys. Dean Stockwell's their boss. Dennis Hopper's the cook in the diner. Devo play a team of radioactive maintenance men from the power plant. It's like a crazy home movie with some real actors in the cast, and your only chance, I'm pretty sure, to hear Neil Young and Devo together covering a Kingston Trio song.

Inside Out (2015)

INSIDE OUT  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
One of the cleverest animated movies ever, about an 11-year-old girl named Riley, whose emotions go all out of whack when her family relocates from Minnesota to San Francisco. It's not just the move that's got Riley down. It's that she's not a little girl anymore. She's not a teenager yet, either, but she's changing in ways that are tough to process, and it's up to the key components in her psyche - Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger - to improvise a way out of the resulting chaos. You'd never think something like this could be externalized at all, let alone done in a way that's both accessible and entertaining to viewers of all ages. Leave it to Pixar, I guess. And if there's a sequel, like what happens in the control room when Riley's 13, yikes, that could be really interesting.