The Mummy (1959)

THE MUMMY  (1959)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Terence Fisher
    Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Yvonne Furneaux,
    Eddie Byrne, Felix Aylmer, Raymond Huntley
Hammer horror starring Peter Cushing as an archeologist with a bum leg and Christopher Lee as the reanimated corpse of an ancient Egyptian high priest. Formula monster stuff with some decent production values. Where all that green light inside the tomb comes from is a mystery known only to Hammer. It looks kind of cool, though. Maybe we're not supposed to ask. Lee, wrapped head to toe in bandages, acts mostly with his eyes.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

HANDS OF THE RIPPER  (1971)  ¢ ¢
    D: Peter Sasdy
    Eric Porter, Angharad Rees, Jane Merrow,
    Keith Bell, Derek Godfrey, Margaret Rawlings
Jack the Ripper's daughter survives a traumatic childhood (go figure) and grows up damaged, with homicidal tendencies of her own. I watched this with my colleague Ms. Applebaum, who heroically sat through it to the end, and noted that it's a horror movie without a true villain. It's also short on reasons for the audience to stay awake. (Ms. A can testify to that, too.) The Hammer studio produced.

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN  (1957)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Terence Fisher
    Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Hazel Court,
    Robert Urquhart, Valerie Gaunt, Noel Hood
Peter Cushing plays the mad doctor, with Christopher Lee as "The Creature", a lumbering giant stitched together with body parts picked up wherever the doc can find them. It's too much talk and not enough monster, but Lee finds a note of pathos in the Creature under all the grotesque makeup. Over the next 20 years, Britain's Hammer studio would become synonymous with horror in much the same way that Universal had been in the '30s and '40s. "The Curse of Frankenstein" was the first dance in a long-running monster's ball.

Wanda Nevada (1979)

WANDA NEVADA  (1979)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Peter Fonda
    Peter Fonda, Brooke Shields, Luke Askew,
    Fiona Lewis, Ted Markland, Paul Fix,
    Severn Darden, Bert Williams, Henry Fonda
A gambler wins a girl in a poker game and the two of them hit the road in his Studebaker. A series of adventures leads them to the Grand Canyon, where they trade the car for some pack animals and go off on a search for gold. A crazy-ass, shaggy-dog western with some bits of magic realism, a few random acts of brutality, and a somewhat casual attitude toward the fact that its leading lady is seriously underaged. It helps a lot that as the playful, bickering relationship between Fonda and Shields becomes more affectionate, it stays platonic. She's as irritating as only a 13-year-old can be, and he's clearly not interested in her sexually. (When they cross paths with an attractive photographer who's about Fonda's age, it's a different story.) Henry Fonda does an eccentric cameo as a goggle-eyed prospector - the only time he and Peter appeared together on screen - and the motel clerk who gives Peter a hard time is Teri Shields, Brooke's mother.

Older Than Ireland (2015)

OLDER THAN IRELAND  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Alex Fegan
Irish folks who have lived to be 100 or more talk about life, love, dreams, accomplishments, adventures, regrets, death and the afterlife. Some are old enough to remember the Easter Rebellion, which makes you wish they'd been asked more questions about the history they've lived through. Their personal stories are history, too, of course, and the movie's content to stand back and let them tell their tales. It's all beautifully edited and shot, combining the testimony of its ancient witnesses with a point-blank physical appraisal of what a century looks like. From the blind, toothless, bedridden man of 108, to the sharp-tongued 104-year-old who's clearly not ready to swear off cigarettes, to Ireland's oldest citizen, who looks like she could still kick ass at 113, they're a variably spry and feisty bunch. The rest of us, if we're doomed to live that long, should be so lucky. 

Soldier In the Rain (1963)

SOLDIER IN THE RAIN  (1963)  ¢ ¢
    D: Ralph Nelson
    Steve McQueen, Jackie Gleason, Tuesday Weld,
    Tony Bill, Tom Poston, Ed Nelson, Lew Gallo
An ill-conceived service comedy with Steve McQueen as a hustling supply sergeant whose get-rich-quick schemes go awry before the go anywhere, and Jackie Gleason as the senior NCO who keeps bailing him out. McQueen goes against type playing a hick, and Gleason's bulk looks out of place in an Army uniform. Both are underserved by the script. Unexpected highlight: the odd-couple pairing of Gleason and Tuesday Weld, when McQueen sets them up on a date. 

Money Monster (2016)

MONEY MONSTER  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jodie Foster
    George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell,
    Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito
A good escapist thriller about what happens when a guy with a gun and a bomb hijacks a television show hosted by an investment hustler played by George Clooney. It seems the bomber  sank his life savings  - his mother's entire estate - in a stock Clooney's character talked up, and when it tanked, he was wiped out. Now he's on a very public suicide mission to get some answers and get even, not just for himself, but for everybody else who got ripped off when he did. It'd help here if the bomber, played by Jack O'Connell, didn't look quite so much like a guy who might be a suicide bomber, and the whole thing seems a little far-fetched, but who knows? When so much of our infotainment (there's a horrible word)  is designed to divide and provoke, you can see how a lot of people could be pissed off by something like this. And it's not hard to imagine one of them being crazy enough to do something about it. Foster manages the escalating tension with skill and efficiency, while Clooney brings his self-mocking star power to a character who's not quite as smart as he'd like people to think he is, and much too vain to admit it. Throw this in with "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Big Short", and you've got a de facto trilogy: three dramatized takes on a real-world financial system that's become more and more suspect, the suspicion being that the crooks at the top are rigging the game, stacking the deck in their favor, and scamming the rest of us.

Listomania / Take 7

Movies Leonardo DiCaprio has made with Martin Scorsese:

              "Gangs of New York"

              "The Aviator"

              "The Departed"

              "Shutter Island"

              "The Wolf of Wall Street"

Movies John Goodman has made with the Coen Brothers:

              "Raising Arizona"

              "Barton Fink"

              "The Hudsucker Proxy"

              "The Big Lebowski"

              "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?"

              "Inside Lewyn Davis"

Movies Johnny Depp has made with Tim Burton:

              "Edward Scissorhands"

              "Ed Wood"

              "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

              "Corpse Bride"

              "Sweeney Todd"

              "Alice In Wonderland"

              "Dark Shadows"

              "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

A Damsel In Distress (1937)

A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS  (1937)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: George Stevens
    Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns,
    Gracie Allen, Constance Collier, Reginald Gardiner,
    Ray Noble, Harry Watson, Montagu Love
Fred plays a visiting Yank who falls for a girl from an English noble family who can't decide whether or not she wants to fall for him. A typically light (and light-hearted) Fred Astaire musical with songs by George and Ira Gershwin. There's no Ginger Rogers or Eleanor Powell or Cyd Charisse on hand to enhance the dance routines. Instead, Fred's partners include Joan Fontaine, Burns and Allen, and in a memorable final number, a drum kit. Highlights: Fred, George and Gracie hoofing their way through a carnival fun house, and Fred singing "A Foggy Day In London Town" in the fog, but out in the country, a long way from London.

The Nice Guys (2016)

THE NICE GUYS  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Shane Black
    Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice,
    Matt Bomer, Beau Knapp, Margaret Qualley,
    Lois Smith, Keith David, Kim Basinger
Mischief and mayhem with Russell Crowe as a brass-knuckles enforcer (he'll beat people up for a price) and Ryan Gosling as a dim-bulb private eye, who for a price will stay on the trail of people he knows to be dead. The two meet cute, or what qualifies as cute in a movie like this, when Crowe, on assignment, delivers a message from a client by twisting Gosling's arm. Till it breaks. In no time at all, they're partners, trying to solve the case of a dead porno actress and a missing reel of film. It's a throwaway, but the humor is gleefully underhanded and the boys are having a real good time. Angourie Rice, who plays Gosling's 13-year-old daughter, has the look and self-assurance of a young Reese Witherspoon. 

Untamed Youth (1957)

UNTAMED YOUTH  (1957)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Howard W. Koch
    Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson, John Russell,
    Don Burnett, Lurene Tuttle, Eddie Cochran
Mamie Van Doren and her kid sister are busted for hitchhiking and skinny-dipping while passing through the South on their way to Hollywood. They're sentenced to 30 days on a coed work farm, where they pick cotton all day and boogie to rock & roll in the mess hall at night. Musical interludes include "Cottonpicker" performed a cappella in a cotton field by Eddie Cochran, and Mamie wiggling her way through "Go, Go, Calypso" and "Oobala Baby", her generous physical attributes showcased prominently throughout. As bad movies go, it's fantastic, trash for the ages, and as such, should not be missed. 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Felix Van Groenigen
    Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse
A musical romance from Belgium, about the relationship between a bluegrass musician named Didier and a tattoo artist named Elise. The roles are effectively cast. Johan Heldenbergh as Didier looks like Kris Kristofferson gone to seed, and Veerle Baetens looks enough like Reese Witherspoon to be her sister, only, you know, with a lot of tattoos. That adds a certain resonance to the scene where Didier proposes to Elise on stage, just like Joaquin Phoenix did to Witherspoon in "Walk the Line". There's a remarkable turn by Nell Cattrysse as the little girl who appears too briefly in the couple's lives, and the movie's best moments are heartbreaking. The film, like its characters, goes deep-end crazy in the second hour, but there's a reason for that. A happy ending might not be in the cards for these two, but at least they've got a great soundtrack backing them up. It's some of the finest Belgian bluegrass you're ever likely to hear. 

Nosferatu (1922)

NOSFERATU  (1922)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: F. W. Murnau
    Max Schreck, Alexander Cranach, 
    Gustav von Wagenheim, Greta Schröder,
    Gustav Botz, Ruth Lanshoff, John Gottowt 
The silent horror classic about an old vampire who moves to a new town and brings the Black Death with him. The story's transparently lifted from Bram Stoker's "Dracula", with the names changed to provide some flimsy legal cover while doing nothing to conceal the obvious theft. Ghastly, ghostly Max Schreck is the creepiest vampire ever, with the possible exception of Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's remake from 1979. He doesn't even look human. For an interesting double feature, watch this with "Shadow of the Vampire", a weirdly imagined retelling in which Schreck himself belongs to the undead.