The Mustang (2019)

THE MUSTANG  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
    Matthias Schoenaerts, Bruce Dern, Gideon Adlon,
    Jason Mitchell, Josh Stewart, Connie Britton
A convict doing hard time at a Nevada state prison catches 0n with a work crew assigned to break and train wild horses. The metaphor might be obvious, but if you're in the market for a feel-good redemption story, it's probably not this. The protagonist, played with scary conviction by Matthias Schoenaerts, admits he's "not good with people," and that's putting it mildly. He's a violent sociopath who probably needs to be confined somewhere for the protection of society at large. Catch him at a bad moment on a bad day and he'll kill you without thinking. The movie's a tough, uncompromising look at prison life, enough to make you consider that if you're going to get caught committing a felony, you probably don't want to do it in Nevada. Bruce Dern, who seems to have cornered the market in crotchety old men, plays the crotchety old horse trainer who supervises the inmate wranglers. 

The Colossus of Rhodes (1961)

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES  (1961)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sergio Leone
    Rory Calhoun, Lea Massari, Georges Marchal,
    Conrado San Martin, Ángel Aranda, Mabel Karr
A few years before he went to Spain to make westerns with Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone directed and co-wrote this sand-and-sandal epic about a slave revolt in the Mediterranean in the third century B.C. Rory Calhoun channels Victor Mature as a Greek war hero who just wants to get back home but ends up joining the rebellion instead. The climax has a lighting storm, an earthquake and the final battle between the slaves and the invading Phoenicians happening all at once. Sergio's budget apparently didn't cover the Phoenician ships. They're mentioned in the script - a thousand of them - but you never see them on the screen. 

Poms (2019)

POMS  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Zara Hayes
    Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier,
    Alisha Boe, Charlie Tahan, Celia Weston,
    Phyllis Somerville, Carol Sutton, Bruce McGill
A woman named Martha, played by Diane Keaton, moves out of the city apartment she's lived in for 47 years and into a retirement community somewhere in Georgia. Why she's picked that particular place to move to is a mystery. It's exactly the kind of immaculately maintained, ruthlessly regimented nightmare that makes seniors want to stay in their homes forever. One of the many rules Martha runs into there is that every resident has to belong to at least one club. There are 100 of them, and if you don't find one you like, you can start a club of your own. Which is what Martha does. She starts a cheerleading club. That's the setup, with one key wrinkle: Martha's dying of cancer. So you've got a feel-good movie with cute old people, a terminal illness and a climactic competition that allows the plucky but decidedly not young cheerleaders to overcome preposterous odds and triumph: cookie-cutter movie-making formula #26. For all that, the movie's not hard to watch, especially Keaton, who looks fantastic at 72. Just don't expect much in the way of surprises. And bring a handkerchief.

La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

LA BELLE NOISEUSE  (1991)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jacques Rivette
    Michel Piccoli, Emmanuelle Béart, Jane Birkin,
    David Bursztein, Marianne Denicourt, Marie Belluc
An exploration into the relationship between an artist and a model, and how it affects their relationships with other people. On a purely physical level, it's not hard to see why an old painter like Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) would want to work with a subject like Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart). But the artist and the movie are after something deeper - the creative and intellectual tug-of-war that obsesses, tortures and inspires two strong-willed characters in the intense, frustrating, exhilarating universe of artistic collaboration. In takes that go on for minutes at a time, Rivette doesn't show the model at all, only the artist's hands conjuring up images with charcoal or paint, the evolving picture slowly revealing the model's pose. For anybody who's ever wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall, literally looking over the artist's shoulder as the creative process takes place, "La Belle Noiseuse" provides that chance.

Michel Piccoli

(1925-2020)

Maiden (2018)

MAIDEN  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Alex Holmes
In 1989, for the first time ever, an all-female crew entered a boat in the Whitbread Round-the-World Yacht Race. Nobody except maybe the girls thought they'd get very far. What happened once the race was underway surprised everybody, and that's the narrative that drives this documentary. Yachting's a sport that takes money - lots of it - and skipper/navigator Tracy Edwards lucked out when she made the acquaintance of Jordan's King Hussein, who bankrolled the project at a point when the financing appeared to be out of reach. The rest is the women on and against the sea. It's a thrilling, inspiring journey, with more than enough tense moments and close calls to keep you on board to the end. Even if you don't share a sailor's  obsession with wind and open water, you don't want to miss this race. 

Welcome To the Monkey House (1991/1992/1993)

WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE  (1991/1992/1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Allan King, Paul Shapiro, Gilbert M. Shilton,
         Wayne Tourell, Brad Turner
    C: Stuart Margolin, Madeline Kahn, Frank Langella,
         Ally Sheedy, Len Cariou, Jon Cryer, Miguel Fernandes
A collection of seven Kurt Vonnegut stories revolving around life and love and death, hopes and dreams, financial planning, artificial intelligence, interior decorating, and the inspired and sometimes crackpot lengths to which people will go in search of happiness. Among the highlights: "All the King's Horses", in which a leftist guerilla leader and an American diplomat debate political philosophies over a deadly game of chess, "Fortitude", with Frank Langella as a medical researcher who comes face to face with the consequences of his work, and "Epicac", starring Ally Sheedy and a tabletop computer with a mind and heart of its own. Each episode lasts about a half hour. Vonnegut delivers a brief introduction. Filmed in Canada and New Zealand. 

An Affair (2018)

AN AFFAIR  (2018)  ¢ ¢
    D: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken
    Andrea Braein Hovig, Tarjei Sandvik Moe, 
    Anneke von der Lippe, Carsten Bjornlund,
    Agnes Kittelson, Ingjerd Egeberg
Unsettling melodrama from Norway about a high-school gym teacher who gets involved with one of her male students. Every move this woman makes, you want to scream at her, don't do this, it's a real bad idea. So, of course, she does. And it is. I know stuff like this happens, but watching it happen, even in a movie, can make you cringe, especially when the behavior involved is as wrong as it is irrational. Tarjei Sandvik Moe, who plays the student, seems way more mature, self-confident and sexually sophisticated than any high-school freshman the real world has ever known, but, who knows, maybe things are different in Norway.

Valdez Is Coming (1971)

VALDEZ IS COMING  (1971)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Edwin Sherin
    Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Jon Cypher,
    Frank Silvera, Richard Jordan, Barton Heyman
This isn't really a spaghetti western, though it was shot in the same part of Spain where Sergio Leone made his movies with Clint Eastwood. Burt Lancaster's company produced it, and it stars Burt as a town constable (and retired Army sharpshooter) with a sense of justice that's not always welcome on the frontier. It's based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and as with Lancaster's other early-'70s westerns ("Lawman" and "Ulzana's Raid"), it's the moral implications that give it an edge. Burt's miscast as a Mexican, but the movie's a good one, and the ending's not what you'd expect. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018)

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE  
(2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
An animated superhero movie from Marvel, in which multiple universes crash into each other, resulting in multiple versions of Spider-Man. One of them's an anime girl. One's a pig. One's a film-noir character in a trench coat, shades and a fedora. One's a quick-witted high-school girl. One's a middle-aged Peter Parker, who's put away a few hamburgers and put on a few pounds. One's a young black kid named Miles, wh0's new to the superhero game. The message is that anybody can be Spider-Man, which is a nice thought, but conveniently ignores the fact that if anybody could be Spider-Man, Marvel would be out of business. Liev Schreiber, Mahershala Ali and Lily Tomlin do some of the voices, and there's a final, farewell cameo by the late Stan Lee. 

Naked Edge / Take 7

Murielle Telio and a couple of mermaids 
  in "The Nice Guys"
Some grotesquely obese dancers 
  in "Nocturnal Animals"
The two girls in the wine vat 
  in "Trail of the Pink Panther"
Matt Smith and a bunch of other guys 
  in "Mapplethorpe"
Isabelle Grill, Jack Reynor and a bunch of wailing women 
  in "Midsommar"
A bunch of skinny-dipping soldiers 
  in "Wheels of Terror"
Some Revolutionary War extras 
  in "Sweet Liberty"
The amazons under the waterfall 
  in "She-Wolves of the Wasteland"
The Roman soldiers being inspected by Madeline Kahn 
  in "History of the World Part I"
Numerous B-movie actresses  
  in "Machete Maidens Unleashed"

The Mackintosh Man (1973)

THE MACKINTOSH MAN  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Huston
    Paul Newman, Dominique Sanda, James Mason,
    Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Michael Hordern,
    Nigel Patrick, Percy Herbert, Peter Vaughan
Paul Newman plays an agent working for British intelligence (his nationality changes with every new fake passport) in an espionage caper that involves a diamond heist, a prison break, a communist operative played by Ian Bannen and a sanctimonious politician played by James Mason. It's good, escapist spy work, and Newman's second collaboration with John Huston, following "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" the year before. Walter Hill's screenplay, based on a novel by Desmond Bagley, teases you along with just enough information to keep you guessing, and Huston directs with a wink, a nod and a practiced eye. Maurice Jarre's zithery musical score echoes, at least faintly, "The Third Man".

Metal Heart (2018)

METAL HEART  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Hugh O'Conor
    Jordanne Jones, Leah McNamara, Moe Dunford,
    Aaron Heffernan, Leah Doyle, Yasmine Akram
A coming-of-age movie from Ireland about a pair of teenaged sisters, fraternal twins, spending a last summer in the house together before they move on to college, or a career, or whatever the grown-up world has in store for them. One's a perky, popular, blonde-haired beauty. The other's a goth. What happens is fairly predictable and maybe at times a bit cute, but Jordanne Jones' performance as the outcast Emma commands your attention from the start. I couldn't really buy her makeover, or her night out with her sister's three obnoxious friends. She seems too smart for that, and as colors other than black start to slip into her wardrobe, some of what makes her unique and appealing gets lost. Maybe that's a part of growing up, but it's sad to see it happen, just the same. 

Torrid Zone (1940)

TORRID ZONE  (1940)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Keighley
    James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien,
    Andy Devine, Helen Vinson, Jerome Cowan,
    George Tobias, George Reeves, Grady Sutton
Cagney and O'Brien play fast-talking Yanks who butt heads running a banana plantation. Sheridan plays a nightclub chanteuse who incurs O'Brien's wrath by (apparently) daring to exist. She still gets all the movie's best lines. A pulp exercise in economic colonialism in which money equals power and the indigenous rebel leader fighting to get his stolen land back is the villain of the piece. It ends without resolving much of anything. Cagney never makes it to that job in Chicago. O'Brien's still a bullying asshole. Sheridan's dreams are up in he air as much as ever. The rebel leader has escaped for the third or fourth time. And the two hustling Americanos are still going at it, cracking the whip, barking out orders and pushing people around.