The Mummy (1999)

 

THE MUMMY  (1999)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Stephen Sommers

    Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, 

    Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor, Jonathan Hyde

A pointless remake of the 1932 horror classic about an ancient Egyptian high priest who comes back to life after 3,000 years as a corpse and unlocks an ancient curse, hoping to resurrect his long-dead mate. The trailer for this looked promising, but the movie's a flop, an obvious Indiana Jones rip-off in which Brendan Fraser proves he's not Harrison Ford, Arnold Vosloo proves he's not Boris Karloff, and Stephen Sommers proves that Steven Spielberg has nothing to worry about. The script's anachronistic, the one-liners are terrible, the continuity defies logic, and the computer-generated monsters don't look any more convincing than their analog counterparts did decades before. Jerry Goldsmith's music is good, but even that's derived from other Goldsmith scores. If you're looking for a little mummified Halloween horror, skip this and watch the Karloff version instead.

Blood From the Mummy's Tomb (1971)

 

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB  (1971)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Seth Holt

    Andrew Keir, Valerie Leon, James Villiers,

    George Coulouris, Hugh Burden, Mark Edwards,

    Rosalie Crutchley, Aubrey Morris, David Markham

You wouldn't think there'd be any blood left in the old sarcophagus after 5,000 years, but this is no ordinary mummy. It's an Egyptian queen who's made it into the 20th century miraculously preserved, except for her right hand, which was lopped off long ago and literally thrown to the dogs. Now her spirit has started to slip into the body of a woman who looks just like her, and the severed hand has escaped from its box (having survived the dogs, I guess), and is crawling around on its own. This was the Hammer Studio's last mummy movie, and it's okay, as mummy movies go. James Villiers acts like he's trying to channel Kenneth Williams from the "Carry On" films, and the ending's playfully twisted. It's based on a novel by Bram Stoker, and the character played by David Markham is called "Tod Browning". Coincidence? Probably not. 

The Mummy's Curse (1944)

 

THE MUMMY'S CURSE  (1944)  ¢ ¢

    D: Leslie Goodwins

    Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Coe, Virginia Christine,

    Dennis Moore, Holmes Herbert, William Farnum

At the end of the previous mummy movie ("The Mummy's Ghost", released the same year), the mummified, bandage-wrapped Kharis and the reconstituted Princess Ananka had sunk into a swamp somewhere in New England. At the start of this movie, they're emerging from a swamp in Louisiana, and the princess is being played by a different actress. On the other hand, the princess, whose hair had turned white in the earlier film, has become a brunette again, so I guess that's a plus. Mummy Movie Rule #7: Never trust anybody wearing a fez.

The Mummy's Tomb (1942)

 

THE MUMMY'S TOMB  (1942)  ¢ ¢

    D: Harold Young

    Lon Chaney Jr., Elyse Knox, Turhan Bey,

    Dick Foran, Wallace Ford, George Zucco

A routine entry in Universal's ongoing mummy franchise, starring Chaney as an ancient corpse with a bad arm and a bum leg. Even the monster looks tired in this one. 

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

 

THE MUMMY'S HAND  (1940)  ¢ ¢

    D: Christy Cabanne

    Dick Foran, Peggy Moran, Wallace Ford,

    George Zucco, Tom Tyler, Siegfried Arno

Two impoverished archaeologists go out looking for the burial chamber of an Egyptian princess and uncover the tomb of a mummified priest, who turns out to be not quite dead. An uninspired followup to "The Mummy", released eight years after the Karloff original, with too much tiresome comic relief, and not enough of anything to keep your attention from wandering off. Tom Tyler, who spent most of his career in low-budget westerns, plays the moldering monster. 

The Mummy (1932)

THE MUMMY  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Karl Freund

    Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners, 

    Edward Van Sloan, Bramwell Fletcher, Arthur Byron

An Egyptian mummy, the corpse of a priest cursed and sealed in a tomb 37 centuries ago, comes back to life, an occurrence that does not bode well for a woman who strongly resembles his ancient mate. One of the best Universal horror movies, released just a year after "Dracula" and "Frankenstein", distinguished by its ghostly atmosphere, inescapable eeriness, and Karloff's gaunt, sinister grace.

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court (1949)

 

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Tay Garnett

    Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, Cedric Hardwicke,

    William Bendix, Murvyn Vye, Virginia Field,

    Joseph Vitale, Henry Wilcoxon, Alan Napier

In a Technicolor musical based on Mark Twain's novel, a blacksmith-turned-auto-mechanic in 1905 gets conked on the head and comes to in the court at Camelot, where he introduces the Dark Ages to matches, safety pins, magnets and firearms. He also teaches Rhonda Fleming how to wink. Fleming makes faces. Hardwicke wheezes and sneezes. Bendix plays the movie's equivalent of Sancho Panza. (There's even a Rocinante, a horse named "Tex".) Bendix, Hardwicke and Crosby cavort down the road in a musical number that looks like something out of "The Wizard of Oz". Bing is Bing, no matter what era he drops down in.

Rhonda Fleming

(1923-2020)

Hard Candy (2005)

 

HARD CANDY  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: David Slade

    Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh, Odessa Rae

A 32-year-old photographer and a 14-year-old girl connect online, exchange flirtatious texts and meet up at a coffee shop. When she gets into his car and they drove off to his place, you're thinking, uh-oh, that was a big mistake, and it is, but not in the way you'd expect. An intense, two-person psychodrama, very well-acted by Wilson and Page, with moments - a lot of them - that could make you real uncomfortable. The Korean movie "Audition" is a variation on the same theme.

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2 

    D: Eiichi Yamamoto

A Japanese animated film revolving around a woman's hellish sexual fantasies, or (more likely) the fantasies of the animators. It's set in 17th-century France and the story involves a beautiful young woman, an evil feudal lord and the Price of Darkness. If you're going to watch this movie, try to smoke some pot first. You'll find out why soon enough.

Hail Satan? (2019)

 

HAIL SATAN?  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Penny Lane

A documentary about the Satanic Temple, a congregation of free-wheeling, free-thinking Satanists, who always seem to incur the wrath of the self-righteous right by insisting that state and local governments actually enforce the First Amendment. If the movie's a little rough around the edges, so are its subjects, a disparate collection of rebels, outcasts, pranksters and provocateurs who view Satanism not as an evil, but as a vehicle to promote humanistic values and personal freedom. They're crusaders for the separation of church and state, religious diversity and tolerance, and they're pretty sure the Bill of Rights is on their side. Making matters worse, they've got a sense of humor. No wonder the far right hates them. 

Cat People (1942)

 

CAT PEOPLE  (1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jacques Tourneur

    Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway,

    Jane Randolph, Jack Holt, Alec Craig

A guy meets a woman and they hit it off and fall in love, but she has this thing about not wanting to be kissed, and spends a lot of time at the zoo, watching the big cats. Groundbreaking horror, famous for its shadowy atmosphere, and a classic argument for the notion that the less you can see, the more creeped out you will be. You know how sometimes you meet somebody who you're really attracted to, and something about them says, be careful, don't go there, this could be dangerous? That's Simone Simon in "Cat People".

Arctic (2018)

 

ARCTIC  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Joe Penna

    Mads Mikkelsen, Maria Thema Smáradottir

Somewhere in the Arctic, a small plane has gone down and its lone occupant has made a camp around the wreckage. He sleeps on a makeshift cot in the fuselage, catches fish through a hole in the ice, and spends hours each day cranking a portable radio, hoping to alert somebody, anybody, to his existence. In the unlikely event anybody else flies by that way, he's carved a giant SOS in the snow. His toes are showing signs of frostbite. He's trying to survive and figure out what to do next. His options are limited. Like the Robert Redford movie "All Is Lost", "Arctic" contains nothing resembling a subplot, though a second character does appear, a woman who survives when her helicopter crashes during a rescue attempt. So now there are two of them, but the woman's hurt and can't move or talk, and they're a long way from anywhere, and to top it off, there's a hungry polar bear prowling around the neighborhood. Mads Mikkelsen plays the protagonist, and he's one of those actors (like Redford) who can command the screen for prolonged periods alone. It's a bare-bones, man-against-the-elements adventure story, a textbook  example of just how well something like this can be done. If you watch it in a place that's below room temperature, wear a coat.

Great Guns (1941)

 

GREAT GUNS  (1941)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Montague Banks

    Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Sheila Ryan,

    Dick Nelson, Edmund MacDonald, Mae Marsh

    Charles Trowbridge, Ludwig Stossel, Russell Hicks

Laurel and Hardy join the Army in the first movie they made after leaving Hal Roach. They look older than before - they were both about 50 - and with the move to 20th Century Fox, they'd lost some creative control. They do a few funny bits, but nothing that compares to their previous work. Silent star Mae Marsh has a small role, and if you look real close, you might spot Alan Ladd in an uncredited bit as one of the soldiers. 

Aniara (2018)

 

ANIARA  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Pella Kågerman, Hugo Lilja

    Emelie Jonsson, Bianca Cruziero, Arvin Kananian,

    Jennie Silfverhjelm, Dakota Trencher Williams

Swedish sci-fi about an expedition to Mars that's thrown off course when some space debris pierces the hull and the ship has to ditch its entire supply of fuel. There are hundreds of people on board, and the movie ends up being about what happens when an expected three-week voyage drags on for years. And years. And years. It's not necessarily a journey you'd want to be on yourself, but it's a head-tripping, challenging film, and Emelie Jonsson, who plays the protagonist - a sort of virtual-reality tour guide - could be Sweden's answer to Jessica Chastain.