Le Dernier Combat (1983)

LE DERNIER COMBAT  (1983)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Luc Besson
    Pierre Jolivet, Jean Bouse, Jean Reno,
    Fritz Wepper, Petra Muller, Christiane Kruger
In the wake of some unnamed catastrophic event, three men try to elude, outwit, or kill each other while picking their way through a ruined world. They're identified only as "The Man," "The Doctor" and "The Brute." Luc Besson's wordless first feature is a strange avant-garde experiment in black and white, like a Mad Max movie directed by Jacques Tati and written by Samuel Beckett. Or something. If nothing else, it's unusual. Ping pong and nitrous oxide are still available in this hellish universe, which helps take the edge off the apocalypse, and the unmistakable resemblance between the doctor's murals and prehistoric cave paintings has to be telling us something, right? In a movie where it sometimes rains rocks and sometimes fish, you never know.

The Little Hours (2017)

THE LITTLE HOURS  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jeff Baena
    Allison Brie, Dave Franco, Kate Micucci,
    Aubrey Plaza, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon,
    Fred Armison, Nick Offerman, Paul Reiser,
    Jemima Kirke, Lauren Weedman, Paul Weitz
Nuns behaving badly in a 14th-century convent. Sex, drugs, envy, greed, prayer, embroidery, witchcraft and a donkey. (Don't worry: Nothing bad happens with the donkey.) This is supposedly based on Bocaccio, and the use of slangy American vernacular in the dialogue is a nice touch, but it's never quite silly enough, or daring enough, to cash in on its transgressive potential. Even when they're being naughty, the sisters mostly keep their habits on, and where's the fun in that?

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Stanley Kubrick
    Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

In This Corner of the World (2016)

IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sunao Katabuchi
Here's something you don't see every day: an animated feature about life on the ground in Japan before and during World War Two. Its protagonist is a girl named Suzu, and the story tracks her life from 1932 through 1945. A lot of what happens is mundane. It starts with Suzu as a little kid, helping her dad collect and sell seaweed in her native Hiroshima. She grows up, gets married, and moves in with her in-laws in a neighboring town. There are personal triumphs and defeats and struggles along the way. And there's the war. Rationing becomes a fact of life, and at one point, Katabuchi takes time out to share a recipe, to show how you can make a meal out of a little leftover rice, a few undersized fish and a handful of dandelions. (Hint: Add salt.) And there's the increasing toll of the bombing as the Americans close in on Japan. What saves Suzu at least partly is that she's a dreamer and an artist. When anti-aircraft shells explode overhead, she sees splashes of color. She sees what she'd paint. What it's working up to isn't hard to guess, and there's a matter-of-factness in the film's approach, not just to the epic horror of the atom bomb, but the everyday hardships and dangers (which include death and dismemberment) faced by those who simply live in the wrong place and end up in harm's way. My dad, who spent the war on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, went through Nagasaki not long after the bomb fell there, and never forgot what he saw. I think he would've appreciated this movie. 

Death of a Scoundrel (1956)

DEATH OF A SCOUNDREL  (1956)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Charles Martin
    George Sanders, Yvonne De Carlo, Zsa Zsa Gabor,
    Victor Jory, Nancy Gates, Coleen Gray,
    John Hoyt, Lisa Ferraday, Celia Lovsky,
    Tom Conway, Werner Klemperer, Gabriel Curtiz
A condescending grifter emigrates to America and makes a killing, deceiving and ripping off everybody who crosses his path. The movie opens with the discovery of his murdered corpse,  and then flashes back to reveal how he ended up that way. George Sanders plays the title role, and if that's not a case of spot-on typecasting, it's awfully close. 

Jane (2017)

JANE  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Brett Morgen
A neatly edited documentary on the life of Jane Goodall, narrated by Goodall herself. Much of it was compiled from footage shot by Hugo van Lawick (Goodall's future husband), who went to Tanzania to document her work with chimpanzees for National Geographic. Goodall quickly observed that van Lawick had an eye for her as much as the chimps, and among other things, the footage he shot provides graphic visual evidence that the photographer was falling in love with his subject. It's not hard to see how that would happen. As a young woman, Goodall was undeniably beautiful, and in her 80s, she still is. Goodall herself is only half the story, of course. The rest is her work with the chimps, and her crusade to conserve as much wildlife as possible while there's still time to do that. She freely admits using her looks to call attention to her cause. Patience, dedication and hard work might be indispensable assets, but a nice pair of legs doesn't hurt, either. 

Sisters (1973)

SISTERS  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    Brian De Palma
    Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning,
    William Finley, Mary Davenport, Barnard Hughes
A twisted thriller starring Margot Kidder as separated Siamese twins, one of whom appears to be a murderer. One way to watch this is to see how many Hitchcock references you can identify. The movie's loaded with them. De Palma's approach is bloodier than Hitchcock's, and his technique is a bit more obvious, but he's just as playful and perverse. William Finley plays Margot's estranged husband with menacing, bug-eyed creepiness, and the future Lois Lane tests her range with a little-girl voice and a foot-to-the-floor French accent. Bernard Herrmann did the music.

Margot Kidder

(1948-2018)

Muscle Beach Party (1964)

MUSCLE BEACH PARTY  (1964)  ¢ ¢
    D: William Asher
    Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Luciana Paluzzi,
    Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles, Jody McCrea,
    Dick Dale, Peter Lorre, Morey Amsterdam,
    Peter Lupus, Stevie Wonder, Candy Johnson
Body builders crash the surfers' beach. Frankie falls for a countess played by Luciana Paluzzi. Annette gets jealous. Dick Dale sings a tune, but maybe he'd be better off just playing the guitar. Candy Johnson boogies like a wind-up doll on speed. Her hair never moves. The countess offers Frankie a recording contract and a cushy life on her yacht. That sounds good to Frankie. Candy Johnson gyrates some more. Her hair still hasn't moved. The other surfers turn on Frankie for being such a dick. Buddy Hackett explains to Frankie what life with the countess would really be like, and Frankie decides he'd rather be on the beach with Annette. Little Stevie Wonder appears out of nowhere to do a song, and did you see any other black people in this movie? Me, neither. Peter Lorre phones in a cameo as the world's strongest man. Candy Johnson shakes and wiggles some more. Her hair remains in place. In the end, everybody lives happily ever after, or at least until the next "Beach Party" movie, when, let me guess, Frankie will fall for some sexy new babe, and Annette will get jealous, and somebody will yell, "Surf's up!", and the guys with their boards will hit the water, and Candy Johnson will dance like a coked-up monkey, and, well, you know the drill.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Martin McDonagh
    Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell,
    Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones
This is either a comedy with a real dark edge, or a drama with a dark sense of humor. It's about a woman named Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) who rents three billboards along a highway nobody uses anymore, castigating the local police chief for not finding out who raped and killed her daughter. To say that Mildred is a piece of work would be an understatement. If Marge Gunderson in "Fargo" was like an earth mother of the frozen north, Mildred's a combative, ass-kicking bitch on wheels. She's pissed off, she'll take on anybody, and she couldn't care less who she offends in the process. Woody Harrelson plays the police chief, a shrewd, affable guy who's got personal issues of his own. (He's dying of cancer.) Sam Rockwell's a hot-headed cop, a psychopath who shouldn't get within ten miles of a badge and a gun. Why he's allowed to stay on the force at all is a puzzlement. There's a little bit of "Hell or High Water" going on here, but not quite. It's very much its own thing, with enough unconventional turns and shifts of character to hook you, even if you can't buy into everything that's going on. Harrelson plays the dying chief with a wry comic edge - the scene where he takes his young daughters fishing and leaves them by the river with an army of stuffed animals, so he and the Mrs. can slip off alone with a blanket and a bottle of wine is a highlight - and Rockwell is just plain scary - the kind of cop you hear about sometimes, but wouldn't want to meet up with ever. McDormand's the one in command here, though, and from the first frame to the last, it's never in doubt. When you see Mildred Hayes drive into town in her station wagon, or cross the street to read the riot act to a bunch of tough-guy cops, you'd better get the hell out of her way.

Two Arabian Knights (1927)

TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Lewis Milestone
    William Boyd, Louis Wolheim, Mary Astor,
    Ian Keith, Michael Vavitch, Boris Karloff
Years before he hitched his screen identity to Hopalong Cassidy, William Boyd had a significant career in silent films as a leading man. In this comic adventure, Boyd and Louis Wolheim play doughboys who get captured in France, escape from a German POW camp, and end up on a train bound for Constantinople and a ship on its way to the Middle East. They save an Arab princess from drowning, and Boyd and the princess hit it off, and then they're in Arabia, where she's supposed to marry somebody else, and you can guess how it'll all turn out, but getting there is fun. You know how some movies are based on real events? I'm pretty sure this is not one of them. Mary Astor plays the princess, and spends most of her screen time behind a veil. Karloff appears for a moment or two as the ship's purser.