Recreation (1914)

RECREATION  (1914)  ¢ ¢
    D: Charles Chaplin
    Charles Chaplin, Charles Bennett, Helen Carruthers
Charlie Chaplin, a girl, a park bench, a sailor on shore leave and a brick-throwing contest.

The Birth of the Tramp (2013)

THE BIRTH OF THE TRAMP  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Serge Bromberg, Eric Lange
A documentary on Charlie Chaplin's early years, specifically the time he spent making two-reel comedies at Keystone, Essanay and Mutual between 1914 and 1917. The film clips look great and include outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage of Chaplin on and off the set. David Robinson and Kevin Brownlow are the principal witnesses. Required viewing for Chaplin fans.

The Rounders (1914)

THE ROUNDERS  (1914)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Charles Chaplin
    Charles Chaplin, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, 
    Minta Durfee, Phyllis Allen, Al St. John
Chaplin and Arbuckle come home drunk to their respective wives. Fighting ensues and they go out again. The wives go after them, and there's a chase.

Time Out of Mind (2014)

TIME OUT OF MIND  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Oren Moverman
    Richard Gere, Ben Vereen, Jena Malone,
    Kyra Sedgwick, Steve Buscemi, Jeremy Strong
There's not much of a story here. It's just a few days in the life of a homeless old man scuffling around the city, trying to find a warm place to sleep at night and pawning his coat for a six-pack of beer. Richard Gere plays the guy, and it's some of the best acting he's ever done. He doesn't disappear completely - he's still Richard Gere - but when you see him panhandling out on a crowded sidewalk, a watch cap pulled down over his eyes and an indifferent world scurrying by all around him, darned if he doesn't look like the real thing. More often, he's photographed at a distance, through windows and doorways. Sometimes you barely see him. Sometimes he's not in the frame at all. He's invisible, and that's the point. He's got alcohol issues and mental health issues, not severe enough to keep him from scraping by on the street, but debilitating enough to prevent him from getting any real help. In one of the film's most frustrating scenes, he goes to a social-service agency where he's told that to qualify for assistance, he'll need to furnish a picture ID. He hasn't got one. He's asked for his social security number. He can't remember it. He's told that to get a new social security card he'll need a copy of his birth certificate. And at that point he gives up. It's more than he can process or handle. So he's back on the street, another shabby old man trying to score some beer money and hoping that when he shows up at the shelter he'll still have a bed for the night. Ignored. Forgotten. Invisible.

Merry Christmas

The Son of Kong (1933)

THE SON OF KONG  (1933)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ernest B. Schoedsack
    Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, Victor Wong,
    John Marston, Frank Reicher, Lee Kohlmar
Cute nonsense in which the same daring explorer who captured King Kong meets up with the big guy's offspring. The opening's straight out of the Depression, with every character either broke or scraping by, and the leads end up back on Skull Island when the ship they're on is seized by its Bolshevik crew. Willis O'Brien's effects again are the highlight. Not to throw a monkey wrench into all of this, but whatever happened to Mrs. Kong?

Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011)

HOODWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Mike Disa
Red, Granny, the Big Bad Wolf and Twitchy the hyper-caffeinated squirrel team up again when some evil characters try to steal the magic secret recipe for Norwegian Black Forest Feather Cake Truffle Divine. It's the second time around for the animated franchise, and it's still plenty of fun, even if it lacks the zip and originality of the first "Hoodwinked" movie. It got mostly terrible reviews, but I liked it, and so did the eight-year-old I watched it with. We might not have been laughing at the same things always, but we were both laughing. Hayden Panettiere replaces Anne Hathaway as Red. Joan Cusack shrieks and cackles as Verushka the Witch. My favorite character this time was the Wolf, followed by the Squirrel. The mean, moon-faced Hansel and Gretel figures are just plain creepy.

Desert Island Partners / Take 2

            Actor/director combinations that clicked:

                 Humphrey Bogart and John Huston
                 John Wayne and John Ford
                 Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor
                 Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer
                 Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel
                 Lillian Gish and D.W. Griffith
                 Vincent Price and Roger Corman
                 Johnny Depp and Tim Burton
                 Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg
                 James Stewart and Anthony Mann

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE  (1946)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Frank Capra
    James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore,
    Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Gloria Grahame, 
    Beulah Bondi, Ward Bond, Frank Faylen
It's hard to imagine anybody except Jimmy Stewart playing George Bailey, a small-town guy who's about to commit suicide on Christmas Eve, when he's saved by a guardian angel and sees what the world would be like if he'd never been born. Critics like David Thomson consider this a film noir, and it's dark enough to be one. It's a relentless blast of populist Americana that makes you wonder whether a 21st-century Republican wouldn't have to sympathize with Old Man Potter, the cutthroat banker played by Lionel Barrymore, rather than George and the notion that people are better off when they work together and help each other out. Every time I watch it, I swear the sentimental conclusion won't get to me. It always does.

All Things Must Pass (2015)

ALL THINGS MUST PASS: THE RISE AND FALL 
OF TOWER RECORDS  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Colin Hanks
There used to be a Tower Records store on the Ave in Seattle. I've still got most of the music I bought there, cassettes and CDs and vinyl albums. I've even got a few of the bright yellow plastic bags I brought the music home in. This documentary tells the story of Tower and its irrepressible founder, Russ Solomon, who started out selling used 45s out of his dad's Sacramento drug store, created a billion-dollar empire based on a sense of fun and a love of music, and saw it all crash around the turn of the millennium when downloading changed the landscape forever. It was a great ride while it lasted, 40 years that defined what was arguably recorded music's golden age. The witnesses here include Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, who claims he spent more money at Tower Records than anybody else in history (and he's probably right). Another thing about that Tower Records on the Ave. That was where you bought your Grateful Dead tickets when the Dead came to town. You'd get there real early on the day they went on sale, wait for hours in a line that went down the street and around the block, and you'd buy your tickets in person right there in the store. Then you'd browse through the record bins, and if something caught your eye that you felt like taking a chance on, you'd buy that, too, and take it home in one of those bright yellow plastic bags. Ancient history, as those things go. R.I.P. Tower Records. All Things Must Pass.

Loving (2016)

LOVING  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jeff Nichols
    Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Will Dalton,
    Sharon Blackwood, Marton Csokas, David Jensen,
    Michael Shannon, Matt Malloy, Christopher Mann
The true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the aptly named, mixed-race couple (she was black and he was white), whose 1967 Supreme Court case got miscegenation laws overturned across the United States. The movie spends very little time in court. (The Lovings chose not to attend the climactic argument before the justices in Washington.) Mostly it's a portrait of a marriage in snapshots - literal snapshots when a photographer shows up to shoot a profile for Life. The period decor is perfect, from the cars to the clothes to the dishes in the kitchen sink, and Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga give award-caliber performances as the Lovings. (Richard doesn't talk much - his wife is much more articulate - but watch how much Edgerton conveys with body language.) The melodramatic potential is extreme, but Nichols, like his actors, never overplays his hand. Watching something like this now, you can't help thinking about the legal battle 50 years later over same-sex marriage, and the same questions keep coming up in both cases: What took so long? And what's the big deal?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE  (1920)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John S. Robertson
    John Barrymore, Martha Mansfield, Nita Naldi,
    Brandon Hurst, Charles Lane, Louis Wohlheim
Good and evil fight for the soul of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Drugs are involved. Many more Jekyll-and-Hyde adaptations have come along since, but some horror fans consider this silent version the best. Barrymore looks slightly ill playing Jekyll, but he really goes nuts playing Hyde. 

The Grand Seduction (2013)

THE GRAND SEDUCTION  (2013)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Don McKellar
    Brendan Gleeson, Taylor Kitsch, Gordon Pinsent,
    Liane Balaban, Mark Critch, Lawrence Barry
A depressed seacoast town in Newfoundland gets a shot at economic salvation in the form of a brand-new job-creating factory. The catch: The village (technically a harbor) lacks a full-time physician. By chance and connivance, a doctor turns up, a young plastic surgeon with a particular fondness for cricket and cocaine, and the good citizens of Tickle Head see the answer to their prayers, if they can just persuade him to stay. Take one part "Local Hero", one part "Northern Exposure" and one part "Waking Ned Devine". Add a dash of "Rare Birds" and a sprinkling of "Cannery Row". Mix in a makeshift cricket pitch, a painful case of athlete's foot, a barrel of lies, some stray $5 bills and one dead, ice-cold fish. Pour on a gallon of cuteness and stir. What you get is "The Grand Seduction".

Under Capricorn (1949)

UNDER CAPRICORN  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Alfred Hitchcock
    Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding,
    Margaret Leighton, Cecil Parker, Denis O'Dea
A rare Hitchcock period piece (he didn't like doing them), with Michael Wilding as a fortune seeker who lands in 19th-century Australia and gets tangled up in the lives of a wealthy landowner (Joseph Cotten) and his emotionally troubled wife (Ingrid Bergman). There are some impressively long takes in this - the scene where Bergman tells Wilding how she came to kill her brother recalls "Rope" - but nobody, including Hitchcock, would put this on a list with his best movies. Cotten, Bergman and Wilding are all supposed to be Irish, but you'd have a tough time finding a trace of an Irish accent between them.