High Sierra (1941)

 

HIGH SIERRA  (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Raoul Walsh

    Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Leslie,

    Arthur Kennedy, Alan Curtis, Henry Hull.

    Henry Travers, Cornel Wilde, Barton MacLane

Humphrey Bogart plays Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a gangster who goes free after eight years in prison and gets involved in a plan to rob a hotel safe. One of two breakout movies - the other was "The Maltese Falcon" - that put Bogart on top in Hollywood, both with scripts by John Huston and both released in 1941. A classic noir thriller in which the good girl (Joan Leslie) isn't entirely good, the bad girl (Ida Lupino) isn't entirely bad, and the criminal protagonist shows signs of wanting to go straight, but only after he pulls off one last big job. There's a moral, too. Never take a dog along on a heist. It's bad luck.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

 

THE MALTESE FALCON  (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Huston 

    Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre,

    Sydney Greenstreet, Lee Patrick, Gladys George,

    Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr., Barton MacLane

I remember seeing this movie once a long time ago at a hole-in-the-wall theater called the 812 Cinema on Monterey's Cannery Row. The place was an old storefront that had been converted into a movie house, and instead of seats, there were cushions on the floor, and it was warm and comfortable and I was tired and fell asleep. I don't remember much about the movie from that screening, but I've seen it a few times since, and for all the machinations of the plot, here's the only thing you need to know: Everybody's after the black bird. That includes private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), a devious dame named Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), a refined young man named Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), who carries a cane and smells of gardenias, and a rotund adventurer named Casper Gutman (Sydney Greensteeet), the appropriately named "fat man", who likes good conversation, good liquor and good cigars. Throw in a gun-toting weasel named Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.), a hard-nosed cop named Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond), and Spade's loyal and efficient secretary Effie (Lee Patrick), and you've got most of the key players covered. It's a swell time, as long as you don't obsess over all the narrative details, and as long as you don't watch it lying on some cushions on the floor of a tiny theater where it's warm and comfortable and you're tired enough to go to sleep.

Screen Test / Take 16

 Match the following women with 

the movies they appeared in:

                                     1. Katharine Hepburn

                                     2. Essy Persson

                                     3. Daryl Hannah

                                     4. Brigitte Bardot

                                     5. Edna Purviance

                                     6. Gal Gadot

                                     7. Lily Tomlin

                                     8. Bo Derek

                                     9. Gena Rowlands

                                   10. Shirley MacLaine

                               a. "Woman Times Seven"

                               b. "A Woman of Paris"

                               c. "And God Created Woman"

                               d. "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman"

                               e. "Woman of the Year"

                               f. "I, a Woman"

                               g. "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"

                               h. "Wonder Woman"

                                i. "Another Woman"

                                j. "Woman of Desire"

         Answers:

1-e / 2-f / 3-d / 4-c / 5-b / 6-h / 7-g / 8-j / 9-i / 10-a

Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)

 

SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST  (1960)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Terence Fisher

    Richard Greene, Peter Cushing,, Niall MacGinnis,

    Sarah Branch, Richard Pasco, Jack Gwillim,

    Nigel Green, Vanda Godsell, Dennis Lotis,

    Derren Nesbit, Desmond Llewelyn, Oliver Reed

Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws take on the evil sheriff of Nottingham one more time in a lively, colorful storybook adventure from Hammer. Greene had played Robin Hood in a long-running television series, and this movie's a followup to that. The sheriff would run out of men pretty quickly at the rate Robin's boys pick them off. Their arrows never miss.

The Rhythm Section (2020)

 

THE RHYTHM SECTION  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Reed Morano

    Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown,

    Daniel Mays, Max Casella, Raza Jaffrey

A hooker living in drug-addicted squalor finds her true calling in the revenge business. Yet another variation on "La Femme Nikita", a little more downbeat and gritty than some, with location work all over the place and a tough, strung-out performance by Blake Lively. Who knew that junkie prostitutes make the best assassins?

Lillian Gish: The Actor's Life For Me (1988)

 

LILLIAN GISH: THE ACTOR'S LIFE FOR ME 

    D: Terry Sanders                                    (1988)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

Lillian Gish talks about her life and the movies, with lots of great clips, mostly from the early days of film. Gish was in her mid-90s when this turned up on public television, and she's as sharp and opinionated as ever, looking back on a career that at the time pretty much spanned the history of cinema. There are a handful of pioneers without whom silent films in particular would be unimaginable, and Gish is one of them. She was shrewd and strong-willed (a contrast to the waifs she sometimes played onscreen), and an outspoken advocate for film preservation. She outlived all of her contemporaries and died at 99 in 1993.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

 

THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES  (1976)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Clint Eastwood

    Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sam Bottoms, 

    John Vernon, Sondra Locke, Will Sampson,

    Bill McKinney, Paula Trueman, Geraldine Kearns,

    Matt Clark, Joyce Jameson, Royal Dano, John Quade,

    Woodrow Parfrey, Sheb Wooley, William O'Connell

A Confederate outlaw refuses to surrender at the end of the Civil War and heads west into Indian Territory and then Texas, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. He picks up a surrogate family along the way, this being a Clint Eastwood road movie, and eventually the cutthroats dispatched to enforce Yankee justice track him down. There is a reckoning. This is one of Clint's great westerns - long, episodic, violent, comical and full of memorable characters, some of them on screen for only a minute or two. There are shots straight out of John Ford, a brilliant Civil War montage, and a distinctive way of ending scenes with a character in closeup moving slowly off the edge of the frame. The Eastwood stock company figures prominently in the supporting cast, and getting Native Americans - Will Sampson, Geraldine Kearns and Chief Dan George - to play Native Americans is a definite plus. The pace is almost leisurely, but there's a point to that, and nothing in the movie feels wasted. Somewhere in here is where craft becomes art. Also, Josey Wales chews tobacco. You don't want to be within range when he spits.

The Island Monster (1954)

 

THE ISLAND MONSTER  (1954)  ¢

    D: Roberto Montero

    Boris Karloff, Franca Marzi, Renato Vicario,

    Patrizia Remiddi, Jole Fierro, Carlo Duse

A lifeless, low-end thriller about a narcotics agent trying to take down a drug-smuggling ring on a resort island off the coast of Italy. Not even Boris can save this one, and like everybody else in the cast, his lines are dubbed, in his case by another actor doing a bad Boris Karloff imitation. Karloff gamely goes through the motions, but he was miserable working on the picture, and it's widely considered to be the worst movie of his career.

No Time To Die (2021)

 

NO TIME TO DIE  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Cary Joji Fukunaga

    Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek,

    Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomi Harris,

    Ana de Armas, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz

Daniel Craig's tour of duty as James Bond ends with a bang, as Bond takes on yet another diabolical madman (Rami Malek), whose deadly new biological weapon could wipe out the human race. Bond fans might want to see this before they find out too much about it. A couple of key plot points concern things the Bond films haven't dealt with before. The story could stand to be tighter, and at 2 hours 43 minutes, the movie's a little long. It's rarely dull, however, there are numerous references to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and it leaves you with a renewed appreciation for the skill with which Craig's Bond films as a package have revitalized the franchise. The end title promises, as always, that Bond will return. How the writers will manage that, and what 007 will look like when they do, will be interesting to see. 

Celebrity (1998)

 

CELEBRITY  (1998)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Woody Allen

    Kenneth Branagh, Judy Davis, Joe Mantegna,

    Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron, Famke Janssen,

    J.K. Simmons, Michael Lerner, Allison Janney,

    Dylan Baker, Kate Burton, Leonardo DiCaprio,

    Bebe Neuworth, Hank Azaria, Gretchen Mol

Smart, sophisticated, self-absorbed New Yorkers cross paths, hook up, break up and treat each other badly in an apparent race to find out which of them is the most pretentious and superficial. Is that being too harsh? I don't know. Maybe. Kenneth Branagh plays the Woody surrogate, and to whatever extent it reflects the director's own behavior and personality, it'a a scathing self-portrait. There isn't a character in the film you'd really want to know, and maybe that's the point. Branagh's character doesn't learn a thing and ends up right back where he started. Judy Davis, playing his estranged wife, finds something like true happiness by evolving into the exact sort of person she loathes. Donald Trump makes a cameo appearance and fits right in. It leaves you feeling grateful not to be living in Woody Allen's New York.

Only the Valiant (1951)

 

ONLY THE VALIANT  (1951)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gordon Douglas

    Gregory Peck, Barbara Payton, Gig Yong,

    Ward Bond, Lon Chaney, Neville Brand,

    Jeff Corey, Warner Anderson, Steve Brodie,

    Dan Riss, Terry Kilburn, Michael Ansara

Captain Gregory Peck rides out with a small patrol to defend a narrow pass against an army of Apaches. The cavalry-vs.-the-Indians stuff is pretty routine - which does not bode well for the Indians - but the movie really stands out as a character study, each misfit member of Peck's patrol clearly defined, and each with a different reason to want to kill their commanding officer. Ward Bond lays it on thick and overpowers his scenes as a booze-loving corporal, and Chaney gives a frightening performance as a hulking head case who's not a monster as much as he just acts like one. 

The Miracle of the Bells (1948)

 

THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS  (1948)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Irving Pichel

    Fred MacMurray, Alida Valli, Frank Sinatra,

    Lee J. Cobb, Harold Vermilyea, Philip Ahn,

    Charles Meredith, Veronica Pataky, Frank Ferguson

When an actress dies of tuberculosis the day after finishing a picture about Joan of Arc, a cynical press agent takes her body back to the coal-mining town she grew up in to be buried. He meets some local resistance at first, but he's in luck, because Father Frank Sinatra is there to help out. Frank playing a priest. You don't see that every day.

Malta Story (1953)

 

MALTA STORY  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Brian Desmond Hurst

    Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Anthony Steel,

    Muriel Pavlow, Flora Robson, Renée Asherson,

    Ralph Truman, Nigel Stock, Gordon Jackson

In 1942, an RAF reconnaissance pilot on route to Cairo gets stranded in Malta, where the siege is going on and the local commander has him reassigned and puts him to work. Efficient storytelling. Exciting aerial combat scenes. Stiff upper lips all around.

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

 

FORD V FERRARI  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: James Mangold

    Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Caitriona Balfe,

    Jon Bernthal, Josh Lucas, Ray McKinnon,

    Noah Jupe, Tracy Letts, Remo Girone

A movie about gearheads and cars that go real fast, starring Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby, who designed a machine to compete at Le Mans (bankrolled by Henry Ford), and Christian Bale as Ken Miles, the hot-wired, foot-t0-the-floor driver who knew how to win. The script's mostly functional and the suits for both car companies come off looking like dicks, but the racing scenes are a rush and the picture won Oscars for its editing and sound.