The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Anthony Minghella
    Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow,
    Cate Blanchett, Celia Weston, Lisa Eichhorn,
    Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall
Matt Damon gives one of his trickiest performances as Tom Ripley, an affable con man whose talent for impersonation and forgery allows him to mingle with the swells. The story starts out with an incidental case of mistaken identity - Tom's a working-class pianist playing a musical gig in a borrowed Princeton blazer - and from that point on it's a game in which he continually ups the ante to see how far he can carry the ruse and how much he can get away with. It's not that Tom's such a talented liar, because, really, he's not. What he's good at is manipulating other people's perceptions, gauging what others see in him and becoming what they want him to be. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow play a spoiled couple who take him in. Cate Blanchett's a girl who catches his eye and keeps crossing his path. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a pestering cynic who sees right through the deceit. The terrain is F. Scott Fitzgerald, from the idle affluence of the characters to the idyllic locations they idle around in. The story's by Patricia Highsmith.

Heartbreak Ridge (1986)

HEARTBREAK RIDGE  (1986)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Clint Eastwood
    Clint Eastwood, Mario Van Peebles, Marsha Mason,
    Everett McGill, Arlen Dean Snyder, Moses Gunn,
    Eileen Heckart, Boyd Gaines, Bo Svenson
Clint whips a platoon of misfit marines into shape and leads them in the assault on Grenada. A formula Eastwood vehicle, notable for its fabulously inventive use of R-rated language. This movie does for profanity what "The Gauntlet" did for bullets. A guilty pleasure.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT 
    D: Ana Lily Amirpour                    (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh,
    Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains, Rome Shadanloo
A woman walks the night streets alone in a place called Bad City. She wears a chador over a striped pullover and sometimes rides a skateboard. She rarely speaks and has a solemn look about her and seems to appear or vanish at will. And every now and then, when the urge and opportunity come together, she finds a neck to bite and feeds. The woman has no name, and she's a vampire, and this is not like any other vampire movie you've ever seen. It's in black and white and it was filmed in and around Bakersfield, California, but everybody in it speaks Farsi and the signage is in Arabic script. It plays out at its own pace, which is usually dead slow. The music on the soundtrack is a mixture of spaghetti western riffs and pop tunes from the Middle East. The nocturnal cityscape looks like a vacant industrial slum. Sheila Vand in the title role is a strangely enticing, sad-eyed angel of death. A guy walking the night streets alone in a place like Bad City, or Bakersfield, California, could fall for a vampire like that.

The Conqueror (1956)

THE CONQUEROR  (1956)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Dick Powell
    John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendariz,
    Agnes Moorehead, Thomas Gomez, John Hoyt,
    William Conrad, Leslie Bradley, Lee Van Cleef
The Mongols take on the Tartars, with John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The production values aren't bad, but the script's a legendary clunker, and there's nothing the miscast Duke or anybody else can do about that. The results are laughable, and Wayne mostly avoided discussing the film for the rest of his life. Agnes Moorehead plays the great warrior's mother, and if you look closely, you might spot Lee Van Cleef. Unfortunate side note: the movie was shot in the Utah desert, close by (and downwind from) a nuclear test site. A scary percentage of those who worked on it, including Wayne, Hayward and Powell, would die of cancer.

Screen Test / Take 8

Match the following pairs of actors with the movies they appeared in together:

           1. Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving

           2. Amy Irving and Richard Dreyfuss

           3. Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason

           4. Marsha Mason and Clint Eastwood

           5. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep

           6. Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline

           7. Kevin Kline and Sissy Spacek

           8. Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte

           9. Nick Nolte and Debra Winger

         10. Debra Winger and Robert Redford

                a. "Sophie's Choice"

                b. "The Goodbye Girl"

                c. "Cannery Row"

                d. "Violets Are Blue"

                e. "Carried Away"

                f. "Affliction"

                g. "The Bridges of Madison County"

                h. "Legal Eagles"

                i.  "The Competition"

                j.  "Heartbreak Ridge

         Answers:

1-e / 2-i / 3-b / 4-j / 5-g / 6-a / 7-d / 8-f / 9-c / 10-h

Suicide Squad (2016)

SUICIDE SQUAD  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: David Ayer
    Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnamon, 
    Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Jared Leto,
    Jay Hernandez, Jai Courtney, Common,
    Adewala Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach
This is like the "Dirty Dozen" of superhero action movies, in which a bunch of low-life miscreants with exceptional powers are recruited from a maximum-security lockup to save the world or die trying and, mission accomplished or not, they're almost certainly going to die. The roster includes Deadshot (Will Smith), an assassin for hire who can fire any weapon at any target and never miss. Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a wack job in a punk schoolgirl outfit whose favorite lethal toy is a baseball bat. Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a fire-dealing pacifist who can incinerate everything within a quarter-mile, but only when he feels motivated. Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a ninja chick with a samurai sword. Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Australian thug whose weapon of choice you can probably guess. And Killer Croc (Adewala Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who's, like, a crocodile man. Each of them has a back story and a theme song, but only Deadshot and Harley Quinn feel like fully developed characters. The movie's got energy, though, and a downbeat, nothing-to-lose fatalism that goes with the inescapable fact that no matter what they achieve, individually or collectively, they're all screwed and they know it. It looks like a castoff sequel to "Batman v Superman" (which I managed to miss), and a transparent setup for a future Batman/Suicide Squad movie. Ben Affleck even makes a cameo appearance as Batman, who's not the most charismatic superhero to begin with, but Ben Affleck? Jeez. With fantasy heroes and villains shifting roles anyway, maybe it's time to put the Caped Crusader on ice, let Harley Quinn and Deadshot take over, and be done with it.

The Third Man (1949)

THE THIRD MAN  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Carol Reed
    Joseph Cotten, Valli, Orson Welles,
    Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Ernst Deutsch
Life, death and betrayal in post-war Vienna, with Joseph Cotten as a naive American named Holly Martens, a writer of pulp westerns who turns up in the city broke, hoping to track down a shady character named Harry Lime, an old friend who has promised him a job. Holly's timing is not good. The day he arrives is the day of Lime's funeral, and when he finds out how Harry died - run over by a car in the street - he becomes suspicious and starts to do a little investigating. So he barges around Vienna, chasing down leads and stumbling on clues, warned at every turn to give up and go home, what he's digging into is evil, and nothing he does or finds out is going to help anybody, anyway. He's in over his head. He has no idea how much. Orson Welles, still young and light on his feet, appears late in the film, and Alida Valli plays a displaced woman who's seen too much, a lost soul who made the mistake of loving Harry. Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee are perfectly understated as uniformed members of the British occupying force. Graham Greene wrote the script, Carol Reed shot on location, and zither music plays nonstop on the soundtrack. The city looks ruined, much of the story plays out at night, and the dramatic climax takes place in a sewer. You could say they don't make 'em like they used to, which is true, and you couldn't make 'em like this one if you wanted to. The combination of time, place and artistic chemistry that produced "The Third Man" only occurred once. It could never be replicated, and what would be the point, anyway, when you can watch "The Third Man"?

Domino (2005)

DOMINO  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Tony Scott
    Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Édgar Ramirez,
    Delroy Lindo, Christopher Walken, Mena Suvari,
    Mo'Nique, Macy Gray, Lucy Liu, Rizwan Abbasi,
    Jacqueline Bisset Dabney Coleman, Tom Waits
This is based on the more-or-less true story of Domino Harvey, the daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, whose short, reckless life led her to a career as a bounty hunter. The script plays it fast and loose - real loose - so Scott goes all-out on style - amped-up, strung-out and gritty. It looks like a movie with tattoos and nicotine stains and dirt under its fingernails. Keira Knightley plays Domino, and you wouldn't recognize her, either, most of the way. She's a world away from "Atonement" and "Anna Karenina" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". (If watching Keira Knightley perform a lap dance is on your bucket list, you can check that off here.) The real Domino Harvey died from a drug overdose not long after the picture wrapped. 

Beach Party (1963)

BEACH PARTY  (1963)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Asher
    Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Bob Cummings,
    Dorothy Malone, Harvey Lembeck, Jody McCrae,
    Morey Amsterdam, John Ashley, Eva Six,
    Meredith MacCrae, Vincent Price, Candy Johnson
When I was a kid, we all watched "The Mickey Mouse Club". My favorite Mouseketeer was Darlene Gillespie, but the one most of the boys liked the best was Annette. Annette was cute and adorable and filled a sweater in a way that young boys tended to notice. Fast-forward a few years, and those boys were a little older, and so was Annette, and now she was filling a swimsuit (but somehow never a bikini) in a series of "Beach Party" movies, and you gotta believe the boys were still paying attention. "Beach Party" was the first of those films. It's silly and innocuous, all surf and sand and boards and babes and kids doing the twist to music by Dick Dale and the Deltones, and Frankie Avalon, of course, and Annette. Yeah. Definitely. You could ask the boys back then. They'd tell you. Annette.

The Boys of '36 (2016)

THE BOYS OF '36  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Margaret Grossi
A documentary about the blue-collar eight-man crew from the University of Washington that beat the odds (and all the other boats) at Hitler's Olympics. It was the only rowing event in that year's Games the Germans didn't win. Husky fans were ecstatic. The Führer not so much.

Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)

KISS ME, STUPID  (1964)  ¢ ¢
    D: Billy Wilder
    Dean Martin, Ray Walston, Kim Novak,
    Felicia Farr, Cliff Osmond, John Fiedler,
    Barbara Pepper, Mel Blanc, Henry Gibson
This movie starts out with Dean Martin wrapping up a performance at the Sands, with the leer, the booze, the cigarette, the chorus girls and everything, so right away you're wondering: Is this supposed to be, like, a satire on Vegas-style entertainment, or are those jokes actually supposed to be funny? Your worst suspicions are confirmed when Dean gets stranded in Climax, Nevada, (you go through Happy Valley to get to Climax, get it?) where a would-be songwriter (Ray Walston) gets caught up in a mad scheme to sell the crooner a tune by hooking him up with a prostitute posing as the songwriter's wife. Does that make any sense at all? No? Then you get the idea. It's a movie that aims for daring and risqué but lands on sleazy and smug, the cinematic equivalent of a crude Rat Pack routine. Which is too bad, really, because it wastes a winning comic performance by Kim Novak as the hard-luck floozy. Martin's willingness to portray himself as a vulgar, womanizing bastard is curious, but might not be far from the truth, and Dino was somebody who probably didn't give a shit, anyway. A definite low point in the career of Billy Wilder, who summed it up perfectly years later: "We don't bury our dead. It's just going to stink 50 years from now on television."

Jason Bourne (2016)

JASON BOURNE  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Paul Greengrass
    Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander,
    Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed
Jason Bourne's still out there and the CIA still wants him dead. Buckle up. The chase is on.

Why Be Good? (1929)

WHY BE GOOD?  (1929)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William A. Seiter
    Colleen Moore, Neil Hamilton, Bodil Rosing,
    John Sainpolis, Edward Martindel, Dixie Gay
In a story that could be cloned from a Clara Bow movie, Colleen Moore plays a department store clerk who falls for the boss's son and then has to convince his old man (and hers) that as much as she loves to party, she's a good girl, after all. It's a standard-issue flapper-era romance, but Moore's awfully cute, and wait till you see her kickin' it out on the dance floor.

Ex Machina (2015)

EX MACHINA  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Alex Garland
    Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, 
    Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno
A zillionaire scientist living in isolation on an estate the size of Norway (where the movie was filmed) believes he's perfected artificial intelligence in an android named Ava. To find out for sure, he sends for a smart young coding specialist to run a series of tests. As the tests become more complex, so do the mind games. This is where "Frankenstein" meets "Blade Runner" meets Stanley Kubrick - an elegant bit of sic-fi, brilliantly imagined and beautifully designed and shot. Oscar Isaac plays the scientist, the kind of intellectual asshole you'd probably change schools to avoid dealing with. Domhnall Gleeson plays the coder, an impressionable geek who can just about match the scientist intellectually, a quick study, but impulsive and emotionally vulnerable. Alicia Vikander plays the android, whose sense of identity and potential is still evolving. She's hard to read, and that's the point. It's science fiction for the mind, not for things that blow up real good. It's suspenseful and provocative and disturbing and cold, and it'll command your attention for all of its 108 minutes, but only if you're willing to think.