The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960)

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE  (1960)  ¢
    D: Albert Zugsmith, Mickey Rooney
    Mamie Van Doren, Martin Milner, Mickey Rooney, 
    Fay Spain, Cecil Kellaway, Tuesday Weld,
    Mel Tormé, Paul Anka, June Wilkinson
An idiotic sex farce with Marty and Mamie as stranded bus passengers who dream themselves back to the Garden of Eden. Mickey Rooney's the Devil and Fay Spain plays Lilith. (Who knew there were leotards in the Stone Age?) Milner gamely gives it a shot, but the script won't give him (or anybody) a break. Van Doren's platinum tresses keep her golden globes strategically covered, and Rooney gives the kind of performance that suggests directing himself was probably not a good idea.

The Bad Batch (2016)

THE BAD BATCH  (2016)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ana Lily Amirpour
    Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves,
    Jim Carrey, Diego Luna, Giovanni Ribisi
A woman named Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) gets dropped off on the far side of a chain-link  border fence, where a sign lets her know she's not in Texas anymore. She's got a sandwich and a gallon of water and nothing to guide her through what appears to be a million square miles of desert except a cryptic instruction: FIND COMFORT. Which she does, eventually, but not before being captured by cannibals who relieve her of an arm and a leg. This is a little like a Mad Max movie, but without the vroom vroom. It's alternately strange, unsettling, hallucinatory, and whenever Keanu Reeves is saying anything at all, ridiculous. Reeves plays a Jim Jones-style cult leader with a harem of visibly pregnant young women. ("Mad Max: Fury Road" had a similar thing going on.) Jim Carey's a ragged hermit. Giovanni Ribisi plays a crazy person. Jason Momoa's the musclebound Miami Man, whose relationship with Arlen is complicated, starting with the fact that he's dined on her missing limbs. Thankfully, motor scooters, disco, LSD, copy machines and spaghetti are all available in this wasteland. There's some comfort in that, I guess. 

Rosebud (1975)

ROSEBUD  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Otto Preminger
    Peter O'Toole, Richard Attenborough, Cliff Gorman,
    Claude Dauphin, Raf Vallone, Peter Lawford,
    Isabelle Huppert, Kim Cattrall, John V. Lindsay
Palestinian terrorists abduct five women, all of them young and beautiful, the daughters of influential business and political leaders in Europe and the United States. Recruited to get them back is a rakish, chain-smoking agent named Larry Martin (Peter O'Toole), a Brit working for American intelligence while posing as a correspondent for Newsweek. Otto Preminger's next-to-last film isn't aiming for greatness, but it's not a bad piece of escapist cloak-and-dagger work, more European art film than James Bond. O'Toole's larky manner and movie-star looks make him an improbable spy, but he's never not fun to watch. The script is by Erik Lee Preminger, Otto's son by Gypsy Rose Lee, and the ending is borderline biblical, an eye for an eye, never-ending. 

Lion (2016)

LION  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Garth Davis
    Dev Patel, Sunny Powar, Rooney Mara,
    Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Divian Ladwa
Somewhere in the vast expanse of India, a five-year-old boy named Saroo stows away in a decommissioned railroad car and falls asleep. By the time he wakes up, the car is locked and the train is moving, and when he finally gets out, two days and 1600 kilometers later, he's in Calcutta, with a legion of other lost children. Saroo's lot is luckier than most. After some hard time on the streets and a brief stint in a hellish orphanage, he's adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) and grows up to be played by Dev Patel. But he never stops feeling lost, or longing to get back home. The movie's about his search for a place he can barely remember and a mother he can never forget. It's a heroic journey, and a deeply compassionate look at what it's like to be displaced. Sunny Powar, who plays the young Saroo, is remarkable, and much of his story is told without words. Most of us have had a much less perilous time of it than Saroo. We don't even think about it all that much, but a significant part of our time on the planet, from where we start out to where we end up, is a matter of luck. A movie like this one can make you appreciate that. 

Listomania/Take 8

Multiple generations on the screen:

         
                       Blythe Danner and Gwyneth Paltrow

                       Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson

                       Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli

                       Maureen O'Sullivan and Mia Farrow

                       Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher

                       Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith

                       Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini

                       Jane Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg

                       Tony  Curtis & Janet Leigh

                           and Jamie Lee Curtis

                       Bruce Dern & Diane Ladd

                           and Laura Dern

History of the World: Part I (1981)

HISTORY OF THE WORLD: PART I  (1981)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Mel Brooks
    Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Gregory Hines,
    Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Sid Caesar,
    Dom DeLuise, Ron Carey, Pamela Stephenson,
    Shecky Greene, Mary-Margaret Hughes, John Hurt,
    Leigh French, Hugh Hefner, Henny Youngman,
    Jackie Mason, Spike Milligan, Jack Carter,
    John Hillerman, Barry Levinson, Nigel Hawthorne,
    Rudy De Luca, Howard Morris, Michele Drake
Mel Brooks takes on the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution, with mixed comic results. When I first saw this during its original release, I didn't like it very much. Too many piss jokes maybe, or maybe I wasn't in the mood. Viewing it again a few decades later, it seems a lot funnier. Keep an eye out for the cameos, and remember, it's good to be the king. Orson Welles narrates.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

BLADE RUNNER 2049  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Denis Villeneuve
    Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford. Robin Wright,
    Jared Leto, Ana de Armas, Edward James Olmos,
    Dave Bautista, Sylvia Hoeks, Karla Juri, Sean Young
By the time the end credits rolled in "Blade Runner" back in 1982, hard-boiled L.A. cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) was about to go on the run with a replicant named Rachel (Sean Young), leaving behind four "retired" replicants and a clue to his own identity. The year (now closing in on us) was 2019. This sequel starts out 30 years after that, and the setting again is a teeming, grimy, dystopian Los Angeles. There's a newer, younger cop on the job and replicants are still being hunted, but the situation has gotten more complicated. The newer replicants are more advanced and self-aware, and may even be capable of reproduction. The key to the story again involves Deckard, now holed up by himself in an empty Las Vegas casino, his only companions a friendly black dog, a prodigious booze supply and holographic images of Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. His mood and outlook have not improved. Another thing that's different this time around is that Deckard's de facto replacement, a blade runner called "K", is a replicant himself and knows it. He's played by Ryan Gosling, who fits the role as perfectly as Ford did, and it's only a matter of time before the old blade runner and the new one meet up. The underlying theme again is what does it mean to be human, and when artificially engineered entities can think and do and feel everything that humans can, what's the difference? The movie is longer than the earlier one and the plotting is more complex - possibly a little too long and too complex. And like the original, it's moody and deliberate when most sci-fi movies are going for flashy and fast. It looks and sounds great - Hans Zimmer's musical score picks up where Vangelis left off - and the script doesn't underestimate (or insult) a viewer's intelligence. Could there be another sequel? The conclusion leaves enough elements in play to make a third chapter possible. But probably not with Harrison Ford, if they're going to wait another 30 years. 

Holiday Affair (1949)

HOLIDAY AFFAIR  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Don Hartman
    Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey,
    Gordon Gebert, Griff Barnett, Harry Morgan
Here's a movie that bombed at the box office because nobody in 1949 wanted to see tough guy Robert Mitchum in a light comedy. It's actually kind of a sweet little romance starring Janet Leigh as a young widow with a six-year-old son, Wendell Corey as the nice-guy lawyer she's been dating for a couple of years, and Mitchum as a would-be boat builder who drifts from job to job and spends most of his free time with the seals and squirrels at the Central Park Zoo. The casting tells you a lot in this case. Like, which of the two men do you think will end up with Janet Leigh? You don't need an encyclopedia to figure that out. 

The Desert Rats (1953)

THE DESERT RATS  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Robert Wise
    Richard Burton, James Mason, Robert Newton,
    Torin Thatcher, Chips Rafferty, Robert Douglas
Richard Burton plays a British army officer assigned to lead a newly arrived company of Australian infantry against Rommel's German tank corps during the siege of Tobruk. The actors playing the Aussies look a little mature to be green recruits, but it's an exciting World War Two action movie, directed with an old editor's skill and economy by Robert Wise. Mason had played Rommel before in "The Desert Fox" (1951), and Burton, in the years before he hooked up with what's-her-name, was a commanding presence on screen. Michael Rennie narrates. 

Footnotes (2016)

FOOTNOTES  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Paul Calori, Kostia Testut
    Pauline Etienne, Olivier Chantreau, Francois Morel.
    Loïc Corbery, Julie Victor, Clémentine Yelnik,
    Vladimir Granov, Elodie Escarmelle, Eve Hanus
A French blue-collar musical about some women who revolt when they learn their jobs in a shoe factory are about to be outsourced to China. The filmmakers do nothing to romanticize working-class life. The women look like factory workers. You wouldn't mistake any of them for a fashion model or a movie star. Their surroundings are dreary and the work they do is monotonous. Their jobs are visibly using them up. But the alternative - unemployment or temporary, part-time, dead-end "mcjobs" - is worse. So you're not looking at "La La Land" here, even if the characters do occasionally break into song. "Footnotes" is definably less la la, and a whole lot more like life.

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

THE WIND AND THE LION  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Milius
    Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith,
    John Huston, Steve Kanaly, Geoffrey Lewis
Early in the 20th century, a Berber chieftain with a distinct Scottish brogue kidnaps an American heiress, creating an international stir that plays into Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for the White House. In the wake of the Spanish American War, the age of American imperialism was just getting started, and John Milius would be the right guy to make a movie about that, but this one goes on a little too long, and it's not entirely clear why American troops led by Captain Steve Kanaly are being ordered to storm the bashaw's palace, or how we're supposed to feel about that. The desert scenery is beautiful, though, and Connery and Bergen make an attractive, bickering couple playing out a not-quite-romance. Best of all is Brian Keith's larger-than-life performance as Roosevelt. (When Teddy's sharing the screen with a giant stuffed bear, it's not hard to see the similarity.) Only in a movie like this one would a heroine as fair-haired and pale-skinned as Candice Bergen look so elegantly perfect after riding a horse all day with a band of Berber warriors through the dust and heat of the Sahara without a hat.

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Simon Curtis
    Domnhall Gleeson, Will Tillston, Margot Robbie,
    Kelly McDonald, Alex Lawther, Stephen Campbell Moore
A movie about how A.A. Milne, successful playwright and shell-shocked World War One vet, came to write "Winnie the Pooh". More importantly, it's about the impact the book's publication and an obscene amount of media attention had on his son, nicknamed Billy Moon, but better known to everybody as Christopher Robin. It's one of those British period productions that looks just swell, and the script mostly hits the right notes, but something about it leaves you feeling less than totally engaged. Will Tillston plays the title role through most of it, and with his cute bowl haircut and dimples, he's exactly the way you'd expect a movie producer to want Christopher Robin to look. He's boringly perfect. Domnhall Gleeson plays Milne, standoffish and a little cold, even when he and Billy are having fun together. Margot Robbie, as Mrs. Milne, is simply horrid. Good thing Billy's got a loving nanny (Kelly McDonald) to provide some real affection. Despite it all, childhood was good for Billy, mostly. As he says looking back late in the movie, it was growing up that was hard. He survived, though, served in World War Two, and according to a title at the end, wound up running a bookstore. He never took a penny from the fortune that came from his father's bestselling books. 

Lord Jeff (1938)

LORD JEFF  (1938)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sam Wood
    Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Charles Coburn,
    Herbert Mundin, Terry Kilburn, Gale Sondergaard,
    George Zucco, Monty Wooley, Peter Lawford
Freddie Bartholomew plays a snooty young con artist who gets sent off to a military boarding school for his role in a jewelry store theft. His affected, high-brow manner does not go over too well with the working-class kids at the school, and life lessons are learned. It's all pretty obvious, but nicely done. Interesting for the pairing of '30s child stars Rooney and Bartholomew, whose voices were changing by then, and whose career tracks would soon diverge. Bartholomew was all but finished in films by the mid-1940s, while Rooney would continue to turn up on screen well into the 21st century.

Better Watch Out (2017)

BETTER WATCH OUT  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Chris Peckover
    Olivia DeJonge, Levi Miller, Dacre Montgomery,
    Virginia Madsen, Patrick Warburton, Ed Oxenbould
A 12-year-old boy (he's almost 13) and the babysitter he lusts after (she's five years older) are settling in for an evening of pizza and movies, when they start to see and hear things that suggest they're not alone in the house. Which sounds like slasher movie formula #23, right up to the point where the plot takes a hairpin turn and you suddenly find yourself in "Funny Games" territory. The result is sometimes funny and sometimes disturbing, but it's still a slasher movie, which means that characters are occasionally required to do stuff that nobody outside a slasher movie, no matter how drunk or stupid, would do. Olivia DeJonge, who plays the babysitter, was about 17 when she made this, and at the beginning at least, she looks it. By the end, she doesn't look a day under 30. Rough night, I guess. Better watch out.

Uncle Tom's Crabbin' (1927)

UNCLE TOM'S CRABBIN'  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Otto Messmer
A Felix the Cat cartoon in which Felix goes down South, where happy black folks play music and dance and a villainous white guy with a whip tries to lay down the law. As an exercise in racial stereotyping, it's not a product of its time as much as a throwback to the previous century, but at least Felix comes down on the side of the characters making the music and not the guy with the whip. And being a Felix the Cat cartoon, it's surreal. Watch the way a frying pan morphs into a banjo and then a unicycle and then a longbow and then a tennis racket, all in a couple of minutes. And LSD hadn't even been invented back then.