A Long Way Down (2014)

 

A LONG WAY DOWN  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Pascal Chaumeil

    Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots,

    Aaron Paul, Sam Neill, Rosamund Pike

On New Year's Eve, four people meet on the roof of a tall building, all planning to kill themselves by jumping off. Instead, they make a pact - written on the back of a suicide note - agreeing to put off ending it all till at least Valentine's Day. A potentially dark comedy that's neither too despairing nor too sweet, its troubled, imperfect characters sympathetically played by all four leads. A sleeper, and not a bad choice for New Year's Eve. Really. See it before you jump.

Bombshell (1933)

BOMBSHELL  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Victor Fleming

    Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, 

    Pat O'Brien, Franchot Tone, Una Merkel,

    Ted Healy, Louise Beavers, C. Aubrey Smith

A rapid-fire, pre-Code comedy starring Jean Harlow in her signature role as a movie star who's a lot like Jean Harlow. Art imitates life sometimes, and sometimes the movies do, too.

Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)

 

THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS  (1943)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: David Butler

    Eddie Cantor, Denis Morgan, Joan Leslie,

    Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Ruth Donnelly,

    Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, John Garfield,

    Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino Ann Sheridan,

    Jack Carson, Alan Hale, Hattie McDaniel,

    Dinah Shore, Spike Jones, Humphrey Bogart

An all-star wartime musical, really just a series of musical numbers strung along a flimsy plot in which Eddie Cantor plays both a look-alike double and an obnoxious version of himself. Slow going in places, but a rare chance to hear Errol Flynn, John Garfield and Bette Davis sing. (Davis, being Davis, doesn't let the fact that she's in the middle of a song prevent her from lighting a cigarette.) Dinah Shore's first movie appearance (she was a Cantor protégée), and the screen debut of Spike Jones. 

La Femme et le TGV (2016)

LA FEMME ET LE TGV  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Timo von Gunten

    Jane Birkin, Lucien Guignard, Gilles Tschudi

It's been more than 50 years since Jane Birkin played one of the teenyboppers who frolicked with David Hemmings on the floor of his photography studio in "Blow-Up" (1966). In this movie, she plays an old woman who runs a pastry shop and goes to the window of her house every day to wave at the bullet train as it goes speeding by. A couple of things happen that suggest her life might be winding down, but that might not be the case. An Oscar-nominated short film from Switzerland, apparently based on a true story. Quietly contained and beautifully done, with a radiant performance by Birkin. 

It Happened On Fifth Avenue (1947)

 

IT HAPPENED ON FIFTH AVENUE  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Roy Del Ruth

    Don Defore, Victor Moore, Charles Ruggles,

    Gale Storm, Ann Harding, Grant Mitchell,

    Edward Brophy, Alan Hale Jr., Dorothea Kent

The premise of this movie gets more timely as time goes on: A bunch of homeless people move into a Fifth Avenue mansion whose millionaire owner has left for the winter. When the owner comes back early and finds out what's going on, he moves into the house himself, posing as a panhandler. A somewhat overlooked Christmas movie that's gotten renewed attention over the years, thanks to annual screenings on TCM. Frank Capra was originally scheduled to direct, but backed out to make "It's a Wonderful Life". Storm and Defore would both find stardom on 1950s television. 

Snow Steam Iron (2017)

SNOW STEAM IRON  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Zack Snyder

    Samantha Win, Wayne Dalglish, Allen Jo, Jim Rowe,

    Ross Kohnstam, Wesley Coller, Victoria Jacobsen

A man in an alley with a meat cleaver. A cop in an alley with a nightstick. A woman in an alley with a gun. A severed head. Some broken teeth. Laundry on a clothesline. Fish in a bucket. Whiskey in a glass, Some women in a brothel. A woman being whipped. A camera. Snow. Blood. You don't want to mess with the woman in the red dress. That's all I've got to say. 

They Drive By Night (1940)

 

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT  (1940)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Raoul Walsh

    George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino, 

    Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Alan Hale,

    Roscoe Kearns, John Litel, George Tobias

Raft and Bogart play long-haul truckers who dream of owning their own operation someday. Sheridan plays the truck-stop waitress Raft falls for, and Lupino plays the boss's wife, who's up to no good. It's hard-driving, tough-guy stuff till the final reel, when Lupimo's character cracks wide open. When she goes nuts, she really goes nuts. A remake, more or less, of the Paul Muni/Bette Davis movie "Bordertown", released in 1935. 

The Brain Eaters (1958)

 

THE BRAIN EATERS  (1958)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Bruno VeSota

    Ed Nelson, Cornelius Keefe, Alan Jay Factor,

    Joanna Lee, Jody Fair, Orville Sherman,

    David Hughes, Henry Randolph, Leonard Nimoy

Parasites start to attack the good people of Riverdale, attaching themselves to the back of the neck and turning their victims into robotic zombies. Not only that: The parasites are organized, and they've got a plan. Can a tough-talking senator and a pipe-smoking scientist stop them before it's too late? The picture only lasts an hour, so it won't take long to find out. You never get a good look at the parasites, which are kind of like big cockroaches, except when they're hidden behind a lot of smoke and fog, and then you can't see them at all. That's just as well, since producer Ed Nelson apparently made them out of wind-up toys, pipe cleaners and pieces cut from an old fur coat. Also somewhere in all that smoke and fog is Leonard Nimoy, and you can't see him at all, either, but there's no mistaking Mr. Spock's voice. In a movie like this one, the pointy ears would not have helped. 

My Darling Clementine (1946)

 

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE  (1946  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ford

    Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell,

    Walter Brennan, Cathy Downs, Ward Bond

    Tim Holt, Alan Mowbray, John Ireland,

    Jane Darwell, Roy Roberts, Grant Withers

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral, directed by John Ford. Walter Brennan plays an old guy and Linda Darnell plays a woman named Chihuahua. Victor Mature recites Shakespeare and Henry Fonda demonstrates the fine art of leaning back in a chair.

The Midnight Man (1974)

 

THE MIDNIGHT MAN  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Roland Kibbee, Burt Lancaster

    Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Harris Yulin

    Cameron Mitchell, Catherine Bach, Ed Lauter,

    Morgan Woodward, Robert Quarry, Peter Dane,

    Charles Tyner, Linda Kelsey, Lawrence Dokken

A good, workmanlike thriller starring Burt Lancaster as an ex-cop-turned-security-guard, out on parole and investigating a coed's murder. There's a noirish tinge to the story, and some nice work by Lancaster and a solid supporting cast. Lancaster and Kibbee co-wrote the story, and Burt's old circus buddy, Nick Cravat, who's often mute onscreen, turns up in a brief speaking part as a gardener. For a guy working the midnight-to-eight shift, Burt's character spends a lot of time walking around in broad daylight carrying a flashlight. 

Screen Test / Take 17

 

Match the following actors with 

the movies they appeared in:

                                     1. Dennis Hopper

                                     2. Gregory Peck

                                     3. Marlon Brando

                                     4. Richard Basehart

                                     5. Henry Fonda

                                     6. Humphrey Bogart

                                     7. Sidney Poitier

                                     8. Robert Mitchum

                                     9. Richard Widmark

                                   10. Peter O'Toole

                              a. "The Night of the Hunter"

                              b. "Night tide"

                              c. "The Night of the Generals"

                             d. "Night and the City"

                             e. "He Walked By Night"

                              f. "The Long Night"

                             g. "They Drive By Night"

                             h. "Night People"

                              i. "In the Heat of the Night"

                              j. "The Night of the Following Day"

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

Eternal Beauty (2019)

ETERNAL BEAUTY  (2019)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Craig Roberts

    Sally Hawkins, Penelope Wilton, David Thewlis,

    Alice Lowe, Billie Piper, Robert Pugh, Boyd Clark

Sally Hawkins plays a head case who's off her meds. The movie's a one-way buggy ride to hell, but Hawkins is good in it. Shot on location in Wales. 

Dark Habits (1983)

 

DARK HABITS  (1983)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Pedro Almodovar

    Cristina Sanchez Pascual, Marisa Parades, Carmen Maura,

    Lina Carnalejas, Chus Lampreave, Julieta Serrano

After her boyfriend ODs on some bad heroin, a nightclub singer takes refuge in an unconventional convent, where the nuns have names like Sister Rat, Sister Damned, Sister Manure and Sister Snake. Early Almodovar, a sacrilegious comedy in the manner of Luis Buñuel. (I wonder if Luis and Pedro were both altar boys.) Carmen Maura, who plays Sister Damned (the one with the pet tiger) would become Almodovar's favorite leading lady in the years ahead. 

The Fast and the Furious (1954)

 

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS  (1954)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Ireland, Edward Sampson

    John Ireland, Dorothy Malone, Bruce Carlisle,

    Iris Adrian, Larry Thor, Bruno VeSota, Byrd Holland

Not to be confused with the unending 21st-century franchise starring Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez, this is an early Roger Corman production about an accused murderer and a girl with a souped-up Jaguar on the run together. They elude the cops and enter a road race that conveniently ends in Mexico, which is where the guy is trying to escape to. Low-budget vroom vroom, shot in nine days for $50,000, with some classic vintage race cars and tough, B-movie performances by Ireland and Malone. Snub Pollard, a comedy star from the silent era, turns up in a supporting role.

Louise Brooks (1986)

 

LOUISE BROOKS  (1986)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Leacock, Charles Chabot

A documentary from the BBC's Arena series, about the recklessly alluring silent star whose place in cinema history and popular culture has long transcended her brief career. Brooks made only a handful of notable films, most famously "Pandora's Box" (1928), whose hedonistic, self-destructive heroine eerily mirrors Brooks herself. In interview footage shot years later, Brooks claims she didn't know what she was doing when she acted, but she was naturally good at it, and her work stands out in the silent era for its instinctive minimalism. Her career collapsed with the advent of sound films, not because she couldn't act in them, but because she had burned too many bridges in Hollywood. By the 1950s, she was living in obscurity and alcoholic squalor when she was rediscovered, moved to Rochester, New York, and embarked on a second career writing about movies. She died at 78 in 1985, a year before this film aired on TV. Linda Hunt does Brooks' voice here, reading from her essay collection "Lulu In Hollywood". 

The Gunfighter (2013)

 

THE GUNFIGHTER  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Eric Kissack

    Shawn Parsons, Scott Beehner, Hannah Knight,

    Jordan Black, Brace Harris, Circus Szalewski

Not Gregory Peck's "The Gunfighter", but a short comic western about a saloon full of desperate characters who can't escape an invisible narrator's all-knowing voice. A goof played stone-cold straight (or mostly straight), like if Tarantino shot a sketch for "Saturday Night Live". 

Behind Convent Walls (1977)

 

BEHIND CONVENT WALLS  (1977)  ¢ ¢

    D: Walerian Borowczyk

    Ligia Branice, Howard Ross, Marina Pierro,

    Gabriella Giacobbe, Loredana Martinez, Rodolfo Dal Pra,

    Mario Maranzana, Alex Partexano, Olivia Pascal,

    Gina Rovere, Dora Calindri, Francesca Balletta

Baroque nunsploitation, a lewd look at life and lust in the cloister. So one of the nuns carves dildoes. One writes erotic letters to and from an imaginary lover. One draws dirty pictures and sells them to the other sisters. One thinks she's gotten the stigmata.One's pregnant and gives birth. One finds a novel use for a violin. My personal favorite (spoiler alert!) was the one who prays while doing naked yoga exercises. The camerawork is gauzy and soft-focus, the nuns are all cute (the young ones, anyway), the storytelling is minimal, and there's just enough nunly nudity to make you want to keep your eyes open. It's too contrived to be really sinful, but just in case, Father Sebastian will be hearing confessions in the chapel on Saturday afternoon.

Born To Kill (1947)

 

BORN TO KILL  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Robert Wise

    Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Elisha Cook Jr.,

    Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long,

    Esther Howard, Isabel Jewell, Kathryn Card

Lawrence Tierney plays a psycho who murders a couple of people, and Claire Trevor plays the newly divorced dame who finds the bodies on the floor. They cross paths at a casino and then on a train on the way out of town, and this being film noir, nothing good happens for them or anybody else. A vicious, low-life thriller with a scary performance by Tierney as a hair-trigger head case women somehow find irresistible. Trevor's role is trickier, a gold-digger angling to marry her way to an elusive sense of self-worth, and her performance is a study in moral disintegration as her facade slips away. Walter Slezak as a verse-loving detective and Elisha Cook Jr., in one of his better roles as Tierney's watchful pal and guardian, provide scene-stealing support. 

A Quiet Passion (2016)

 

A QUIET PASSION  (2016)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Terence Davies

    Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer  Ehle, Keith Carradine,

    Joanna Bacon, Duncan Duff, Jodhi May

The quiet, passionate life of Emily Dickinson, from the time she left school in 1848 to her death at 55 in 1886. Dickinson spent  just about all of that time - her whole adult life - in her family's home, living for years as a virtual recluse. She also turned out 1,800 poems, only ten of them, severely edited, published during her lifetime. Cynthia Nixon recites some of those poems in voiceover while playing Emily in this film. It's beautifully designed and composed and shot, but the script is literate to a fault, with characters exchanging perfectly formed sentences as if they were engaged in a contest to see who can score the most elegant rhetorical points. The actors do what they can, but it's hard to imagine real people talking that way, even if it is the 19th century and one of them is Emily Dickinson. 

Charlie Chan At the Opera (1936)

 

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA  (1936)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: H. Bruce Humberstone

    Warner Oland, Boris Karloff, Keye Luke,

    Charlotte Henry, Thomas Beck, Margaret Irving,

    Gregory Gaye, Nedda Harrigan, William Demarest

Detective whose working vocabulary conspicuously lacks articles investigates murder at opera house. Chief suspect is escaped maniac, but case might not be so simple. "This opera is going on tonight, even if Frankenstein walks in," stage manager says, and guess which actor plays maniac?

Zotz! (1962)

ZOTZ!  (1962)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Castle 

    Tom Poston, Julia Meade, Jim Backus,

    Cecil Kellaway, Zeme North, Fred Clark,

    James Millhollin, Mike Mazurki, Margaret Dumont

Tom Poston was a prolific comic actor who had a long career on television, while appearing in just a handful of theatrical films. In this one, he plays a professor of ancient languages who comes into the possession of a medallion that appears to give him extraordinary powers. It's a light-weight, Cold War comedy from William Castle, whose specialty was gimmicky horror. Here, Castle's trying to steal from Frank Capra, which doesn't exactly make him Frank Capra. The movie's pleasant but slight. Louis Nye, Poston's old colleague from the Steve Allen Show, makes a cameo appearance, and Margaret Dumont turns up in a late-career role and catches a cake in the kisser.

True Story (2004)

 

TRUE STORY  (2004)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Stephanie J. Via

    India Schell, Jordyn Pugh, Foxy

In voiceover, an old woman tells a story from when she was a little girl. The story has a disturbing part, but there's a moral at the end of it. It involves a cat. At the same time, on the screen, an old woman pokes through an empty old house, picks up a photograph and looks at it, hears something and looks out the window, and sees a little girl with a cat. At the end, the old woman and the little girl (but not the cat) walk away together. It's shot in stark, old-photo black and white and lasts five minutes.

Destination Tokyo (1943)

 

DESTINATION TOKYO  (1943)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Delmer Daves

    Cary Grant, John Garfield, Dane Clark,

    Robert Hutton, Alan Hale, John Ridgeley,

    William Prince, Tom Tully, Faye Emersion,

    Peter Whitney, Warren Douglas, John Forsythe

Exciting World War Two adventure starring Cary Grant as the captain of a submarine on a mission to recon Tokyo in advance of the Doolittle bombing raid. I first saw this on TV when I was a kid, and the part where the pharmacist's mate performs an appendectomy while the sub sits at the bottom of Tokyo Bay is still intense. Even in the context of a wartime propaganda flick, the anti-Japanese rhetoric is vicious. 

Africa Screams (1949)

 

AFRICA SCREAMS  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Charles Barton

    Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Hillary Brooke

    Clyde Beatty, Max Baer, Buddy Baer, 

    Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, Frank Buck

Idiot bookstore clerks go on an African safari and much jungle nonsense follows. A fairly amusing A&C comedy, even if the gags are familiar and the running time of just under 80 minutes feels a little long. The supporting cast includes the Baer brothers as a couple of strong-arm enforcers, and Shemp Howard and Joe Besser, who at different times (but never together) were part of the Three Stooges.

Gunga Din (1939)

 

GUNGA DIN  (1939)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Stevens

    Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Victor McLaglen,

    Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, Joan Fontaine,

    Montagu Love, Robert Coote, Abner Biberman

The classic adventure yarn based on Kipling, with Grant, Fairbanks and McLaglen as army sergeants fighting off the brown-skinned savages in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. Grant gets most of the funny stuff, Fairbanks gets the romance (which doesn't last long), and McLaglen bears a striking resemblance to late-stage Errol Flynn (0r maybe it's that Flynn toward the end of his life was starting to look like Victor McLaglen). I'm still not sure how Grant survives the climactic battle after being shot, stabbed and tortured, but in a movie like this one, it's better not to ask too many questions.

Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927)

 

BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A CITY  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Walther Ruttmann

A remarkable documentary tracking a day in the life of Berlin at about the half-way point between the two world wars. Some parts were obviously staged, but even those look real enough. The most startling: a sequence somewhere in the middle, a series of increasingly tight closeups of a woman about to commit suicide. Like Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera" (released two years later), Ruttmann's eye doesn't miss anything. Speeding trains, empty streets, a man walking a dog, kids going to school, people walking to work, taxicabs, typewriters, factory machinery, horse-drawn wagons, a nightclub, a cinema, a coffin, a cat. From early morning to late at night, it's all there. The print I saw on YouTube had no sound at all, not even a musical score, but the picture quality was exceptional. If you're cruising for something to look at some night, and you've got an hour to spare, check it out.

Rooster Cogburn (1975)

 

ROOSTER COGBURN  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Stuart Millar

    John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Zerbe,

    Richard Jordan, John McIntire, Strother Martin

"True Grit" meets "The African Queen", with the Duke reprising the role that won him an Oscar and Kate again cast as a feisty, rock-ribbed spinster. The chemistry between the two looks so effortless, you'd think they'd been acting together forever, but this was their only joint appearance onscreen. The plot, about some outlaws and a wagonload of nitroglycerine, is serviceable, and in this case, that's enough. The stars take care of the rest. 

The Undying Monster (1942)

 

THE UNDYING MONSTER  (1942)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Brahm

    James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard,

    Bramwell Fletcher, Heather Thatcher, Halliwell Hobbes,

    Aubrey Mather, Holmes Herbert, Eily Malyon

When a man and a woman are brutally attacked on the cliffs outside their ancestral home, a Scotland Yard detective gets called on to investigate. The house is a drafty old place with a crypt in the basement, everybody's a suspect, there's talk of ghosts and monsters, and it appears a family curse may be involved. Those sure sound like wolf howls out there in the frosty night, and if it's occurred to you that Lon Chaney's "The Wolf Man" had come out the previous year, you're on the right track. There's even a little four-line werewolf poem that gets repeated. It's not as good as the one in the Chaney film, and there's no Maria Ouspenskaya to recite it this time, but you get the idea. It takes, like, forever for the beast to finally appear, and by then, even finding out who the werewolf might be feels a little anticlimactic. 

Trick or Treat

Kiss of Death (1947)

 

KISS OF DEATH  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Henry Hathaway

    Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Richard Widmark,

    Colleen Gray, Taylor Holmes, Howard Smith,

    Karl Malden, Millard Mitchell, Mildred Natwick

The Great Victor gives one of his better performances as Nick Bianco, a hood who gets sent up for his role in a jewel heist and decides to go straight by ratting on his accomplices. Brian Donlevy plays the assistant D.A. Colleen Gray plays Victor's girl. It was done on location by Henry Hathaway and it's a classic film noir, but here's the thing: Richard Widmark, an old woman in a wheelchair and a flight of stairs. Whatever else you take away from watching this movie, you won't forget Richard Widmark.

Movie Star Moment: Jean Arthur

 

Jean Arthur as Wilhelmina Clark

in "The Whole Town's Talking" (1935)

    In "The Whole Town's Talking", directed by John Ford, Jean Arthur and Edward G. Robinson play office drones working for an ad agency. In this scene, they've been hauled into police headquarters because they were out on the street and Robinson has the bad luck to look exactly like a notorious gangster named Killer Mannion (also played by Edward G. Robinson). They're being questioned in separate rooms, and when the cops tell Jean, "Mannion's confessed," she sees right through their ploy and decides to have a little fun with them, striking a mock-tough pose, complete with a cigarette that she never takes out of her mouth. She knows her timid pal from the office is anything but a criminal, and the cops have messed up, so whey they ask her a series of rapid-fire questions about a long list of robberies and murders, she responds to each one by saying, "That was Mannion." She's punking them, and they're buying it, and she's enjoying herself, and the cigarette never leaves her lips.

    Arthur would soon become Frank Capra's favorite leading lady, in movies like "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" and "Mr Deeds Goes To Town", but this was the movie that got her noticed, after a decade of mostly B pictures and supporting parts. And the thing in this film that put her over the top? You might say "That was Mannion."

Red Hot Mamma (1934)

 

RED HOT MAMMA  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Dave Fleischer

Betty Boop dreams she's in hell. Hell doesn't stand a chance.

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

 

MINNIE THE MOOCHER  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Dave Fleischer

Betty Boop runs away from home and ends up in a nightmare world where a ghostly walrus sings the title tune. Cab Calloway appears in a live-action segment and references to death abound.

There's Something About a Soldier (1934)

 

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT A SOLDIER 

    D: Dave Fleischer                                 (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢

Would you join the Army to get a kiss from Betty Boop? Well, if you were in a Betty Boop cartoon, sure, why not?

So Young, So Bad (1950)

 

SO YOUNG, SO BAD  (1950)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Bernard Vorhaus

    Paul Henried, Catherine McLeod, Grace Coppin,

    Anne Frances, Anne Jackson, Rosita Moreno,

    Cecil Clovelly, Enid Rudd, Mike Kellin

The newly arrived psychiatrist at a girls' reformatory runs into a wall of institutional resistance when he suggests that abuse and torture might not be the best way to rehabilitate delinquent teenagers. Hard-hitting (and effectively realized) pulp, with Frances, Jackson and Rosita (Rita) Moreno all in their first big-screen roles. Director Bernard Vorhaus and screenwriter Jean Rouveral were up against the blacklist at the time. Both would leave the country the following year. 

Blood Simple (1984)

 

BLOOD SIMPLE  (1984)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

    John Getz, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh,

    Dan Hedaya, Samm-Art Williams, Deborah Neumann

The Coen Brothers' first movie, a discourse on how important it is not to do anything stupid when you're trying to get away with murder. John Getz works at a bar owned by Dan Hedaya, whose wife (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with Getz. M. Emmet Walsh plays a private eye hired by Hedaya to stake out the lovers, which he does, gleefully, and everything goes horribly, comically wrong from there. Two favorite bits: the part where the camera glides up and over a passed-out customer as it tracks down the bar, and what happens to the detective when he reaches out the window and into the room next door. A career role for Walsh, and the screen debut of Frances McDormand (aka Mrs. Joel Coen). 

A Lawless Street (1955)

 

A LAWLESS STREET  (1955)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joseph H. Lewis

    Randolph Scott, Angela Lansbury, Warner Anderson,

    Jean Parker, Michael Pate, Wallace Ford, James Bell,

    John Emery, Don Megowan, Ruth Donnelly

A square-jawed U.S. marshall and his six-gun are all that stand between the town of Medicine Bend and the crooks who want to take it over, so the crooks hire a gun of their own to take out the marshall, which he does. Luck would seem to favor the crooks at that point, except for two things: The marshall's not really dead, and he's played by Randolph Scott. It's not one of Scott's great westerns - most of those were directed by Budd Boetticher - but Angela Lansbury turns up in it, playing a musical-hall entertainer and Scott's estranged wife. Randolph Scott and Angela Lansbury - that's a combination you don't see every day. 

Angela Lansbury

(1925-2022)

Muhammad Ali (2021)

 

MUHAMMAD ALI  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ken Burns

A Ken Burns documentary on the larger-than-life life of Muhammad Ali, the brash, controversial, lightning-fast heavyweight boxing champion, who proclaimed himself "the greatest," and then got in the ring and proved it. Burns is an admirer - not surprising, considering his career-long preoccupation with race - but the movie risks being too reverential. Burns acknowledges Ali's imperfections, most notably an ugly capacity for cruelty, but the talking-head witnesses, who include Bob Arum, Don King, Walter Moseley and Larry Holmes, come down squarely in Ali's corner. There's a lot of footage of Ali beating guys up and getting pounded, but no expert medical testimony about the role of all that pounding in his agonizing decline. Still, when you see him between the ropes, dancing and jabbing and taunting an opponent before delivering a knockout in the appointed round, one thing is clear: F0r a few years there, when the world was young and so was he, Ali really was the greatest. 

To Live and Die In L.A. (1985)

 

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.  (1985)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Friedkin

    William Peterson, Willem Dafoe, John Pankow,

    Debra Feuer, John Turturro, Darlanne Fleugel,

    Dean Stockwell, Steve James, Robert Downey Sr.

Willem Dafoe plays an artist whose primary source of income is printing $20 bills. Of course, printing your own money is a form of creative enterprise the Treasury Department does not favor, and government agents led by hotshot BASE jumper William Peterson go after Dafoe. So Dafoe makes money (you can see step-by-step how he does that) and Peterson drives the wrong way on the freeway in a slam-bang car chase and John Barry's jazz score pulses along and cinematographer Robby Müller paints the sky orange over some of the bleakest parts of Los Angeles, while Friedkin keeps things moving at a relentless clip. Welcome to L.A.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010)

 

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A MAN WITHIN  

    D: Yony Leyser                                       (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢

Wm. S. Burroughs queer junky rule breaker rich kid finger amputee Beat icon acid head novelist gun nut wife killer punk godfather shotgun artist lover of cats and isn't it all some great cosmic joke well Bill would think so a crazy cut up goof for which he was the keeper of the punchline.

They Died With Their Boots On (1941)

 

THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON  

    D: Raoul Walsh                 (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy,

    Charley Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Anthony Quinn,

    Sydney Greenstreet, Regis Toomey, Hattie McDaniel

Errol Flynn plays George Armstrong Custer, from West Point to the Little Big Horn. That's pretty good casting, really, and the movie's a lively piece of storybook history, as long as you buy into the storybook without asking too many questions about the history. Custer's legacy is complicated. The last of eight films Flynn and Olivia de Havilland starred in together. Anthony Quinn, already ethnically typecast, plays Crazy Horse.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974)

 

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joseph Sargent

    Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, 

    Hector Elizondo, Earl Hindman, Jerry Stiller,

    Tony Roberts, Kenneth McMillan, Doris Roberts

Four heavily armed men, all wearing eyeglasses, mustaches, brimmed hats and overcoats, hijack a New York subway car and demand a million dollars for the release of its 17 passengers. When the call first comes in to transit security, it just seems too crazy - what is this, anyway, a movie? - but the hijackers aren't kidding. A tense, white-knuckle thriller, unencumbered by anything resembling a subplot. You're in the story from the opening minute, and that's where you stay for the duration. Walter Matthau plays the plainclothes security officer who takes over the hostage negotiations, Robert Shaw (lethally understated) is the lead hijacker, and Woody Allen's buddy Tony Roberts plays the mayor's troubleshooting deputy. This was filmed during John Lindsay's time as mayor of New York, but see if you don't think the mayor in the movie looks suspiciously like Ed Koch.

Slack Bay (2016)

 

SLACK BAY  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Bruno Dumont

    Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi,

    Brandon Lavieville, Raph, Didier Després, Cyril Rigaux

    Thierry Lavieville, Caroline Carbonnier, Jean-Luc Vincent

WTF? An absurdist French comedy set in a picturesque spot on the coast early in the 20th century. The collective protagonists are two clueless detectives and two equally eccentric families: one rich, incestuous, condescending and out to lunch, and the other made up of impoverished, murderous cannibals. Try to imagine Monty Python collaborating with Laurel and Hardy in something directed by Luis Buñuel. That doesn't quite capture what's going on here, but it gets you in the door. If you watch it trying to determine which character has gone the most irretrievably bonkers, hmmm, that's a tough call, but keep an eye on Juliette Binoche. 

Tarzan's Revenge (1938)

TARZAN'S REVENGE  (1938)  ¢ ¢

    D: D. Ross Lederman

    Glenn Morris, Eleanor Holm, George Barbier,

    C. Henry Gordon, Hedda Hopper, Joseph Sawyer

A notably tame Tarzan movie in which the lord of the jungle encounters some big-game hunters on the trail of a rare white crocodile. They never do find the white crocodile - one of several plot points that go unresolved - but Tarzan swings through the trees and fights (but does not kill) a lion, and he and a young woman traveling with the hunters go swimming together in an underwater scene that's a lot more discreet than the one in "Tarzan and His Mate". If you're looking to pass the time, this'll do, but the Weissmuller Tarzan films, the early ones from MGM, still hold up the best.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

 

THE SUICIDE SQUAD  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: James Gunn

    Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, Joel Kinnaman,

    John Cena, Daniela Melchior, Sylvester Stallone,

    Viola Davis, David Dastmalchian, Michael Rooker,

    Nathan Fillion, Flula Borg, Sean Gunn, Pete Davidson

Castoff superheroes - the scum of the DC Universe - save the world. Again. Starting out, the gang includes stoic tough guy Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), nutso punk Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and a bunch of other characters who mostly don't survive the first reel. Then it turns out there's a second gang of commandos that includes two sharpshooters (one black and one white), a girl called Ratcatcher 2 (she has a way with rodents), and a shark played by Sylvester Stallone. The shark is always hungry and goes around saying "num num" all the time and will chow down on anything that crosses its path. I'm not making this up, but somebody else did. It's mostly a lot of fun - a rough, silly, crazy, violent, comical good time. Oh, and there's a weasel. It's a mean, mad-looking weasel. You could get rabies just looking at that weasel. I wish they'd done more with the weasel. 

The Cheap Detective (1978)

 

THE CHEAP DETECTIVE  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Moore

    Peter Falk, Ann-Margret, Madeline Kahn, Sid Caesar,

    Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, John Houseman,

    Dom DeLuise, Nicol Williamson, Louise Fletcher, 

    Fernando Lamas, Marsha Mason, James Coco,

    Paul Williams, Phil Silvers, David Ogden Stiers,

    Abe Vigoda, Scatman Crothers, James Cromwell

A comic mashup of "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca", with Peter Falk as the Humphrey Bogart surrogate, a hard-boiled private eye named Lou Peckinpaugh. There are dames, of course, and shady characters with names like Pepe Damascus (Dom DeLuise) and Jasper Blubber (John Houseman), and it moves real fast at first, before slowing down. Neil Simon wrote the script as a followup to "Murder By Death". Louise Fletcher's a standout as Ingrid Bergman. Conspicuously missing: a stand-in for Claude Rains.

Louise Fletcher

(1934-2022)

Quote File / Take 23

 

    "Every film should have a beginning, a middle 

      and an end, but not necessarily in that order."

Jean-Luc Godard

(1930-2022)

Some Came Running (1958)

 

SOME CAME RUNNING  (1958)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Vincente Minnelli

    Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,  Shirley MacLaine, 

    Arthur Kennedy, Martha Hyer, Nancy Gates,

    Leora Dana, Betty Lou Keim, Larry Gates

Hot times in an Indiana town that's small enough to have a bar called Smitty's, but big enough to have mansions, a couple of banks, a college, a country club, a daily newspaper and a brassiere factory. Frank's a returning G.I., an abrasive sometime novelist who's moody when he's drunk, mean when he's sober, and volatile either way. He can be generous and caring, too, but not for very long. Dean plays a smooth-talking gambler who never takes off his hat and betrays his sensitive nature by referring to women as pigs. (Martin claimed it was his favorite role.) Shirley's a floozy from Chicago, a girl with a limited vocabulary but a big heart, and by default the film's most sympathetic character. It's high-end trash, based on a mammoth novel by James Jones, but Elmer Bernstein's score is a good one, and Minnelli's use of lighting and color gives it an artful, artificial edge. The ending's unexpectedly touching, thanks to MacLaine, who got an Oscar nomination for her performance. 

Sarge, thanks for the chocolate chip cookies. 

Suck (2009)

 

SUCK  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Rob Stefaniuk

    Rob Stefaniuk, Jessica Paré, Paul Anthony,

    Mike Lobel, Dave Foley, Chris Ratz, Moby,

    Malcolm McDowell, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop,

    Henry Rollins, Alex Lifeson, Dimitri Coats

Yes, there really is a movie called "Suck", and surprisingly, it's not bad. It's a horror comedy about a rock-&-roll band that's going nowhere till the bass player turns into a vampire. Malcolm McDowell plays the vampire hunter (named Eddie Van Helsing), and Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper are on hand to provide spiritual guidance about the rewards and perils of joining the undead. Any time somebody in this film says, "It's not what it looks like," you can bet it's exactly what it looks like.

Smothered (2002)

 

SMOTHERED: THE CENSORSHIP STRUGGLES OF THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR

    D: Maureen Muldaur                                  (2002)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

For three years in the late 1960s, Tom and Dick Smothers had their own musical variety show on CBS. The competition in their Sunday night time slot was "Bonanza" on NBC and the ABC Sunday Night Movie. The odds their program would survive were minimal, but CBS was desperate to put something on the air quick (to replace Garry Moore) and the brothers had nothing to lose, so the show went on. With one foot in vaudeville and one in the counterculture, the Smothers Brothers had a unique multigenerational appeal. They were young and smart and looked like the middle-class boys next door. They idolized Jack Benny, poked fun at the folk songs they played, and didn't mind taking on topical issues, something nobody else in entertainment television was doing. The show took off, along with a fierce, ongoing battle over what material was appropriate for prime-time viewing. As satirists with a weekly TV soapbox, the brothers pushed the envelope, defied the censors and fought the suits till 1969, when the network fired them. As its title suggests, that's what this documentary is about, with key players like Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Mason Williams, David Steinberg and Leigh French all turning up as witnesses. It's a significant chapter in television history, and for anybody who remembers "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", a chance to reflect on the passage of time, the tenacity of Tom Smothers, the deadpan brilliance of Pat Paulsen's presidential campaign, and how much fun it was on Sunday nights back then to "Share a Little Tea With Goldie".

Promise At Dawn (2017)

 

PROMISE AT DAWN  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Eric Barbier

    Charlotte Gainsbourg, Pierre Niney, 

    Catherine McCormack, Némo Shiffman, 

    Paweł Puchalski, Jean-Pierre Darroussin

A good-looking biopic covering the early life of novelist Romain Gary, from his childhood in Lithuania through his days as a struggling young writer to his service as an aviator in the Free French Forces during World War Two. Mostly it's about his relationship with his mother, Nina, a loving, demanding woman who drove her son to excel, and there are points in the movie where mother and son seem about equally unhinged. It's episodic and not quite as compelling as it maybe wants to be, but there's an exciting aerial combat sequence toward the end, and there's Charlotte Gainsbourg playing Nina, ambitious, domineering, obsessively devoted to her only child, and sometimes out to lunch. Charlotte Gainsbourg looking old and frumpy: That's something new in the world.

Seven Days To Noon (1950)

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON  (1950)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Boulting

    Barry Jones, Olive Sloane, Andre Morell,

    Hugh Cross, Sheila Manahan, Joan Hickson,

    Ronald Adam, Victor Madden, Geoffrey Keen

An atomic-age thriller that plays like a Hitchcock movie, about a scientist who steals a bomb from the lab and threatens to blow up half of London if Britain doesn't get out of the nuclear-arms business. Joan Hickson as a chain-smoking landlady with a house full of cats and Olive Sloane as a floozy with a small dog provide eccentric support. Boulting makes effective use of the London locations, and Gilbert Taylor, who shot "Dr. Strangelove", "A Hard Day's Night" and the first "Star Wars" movie, did the black-and-white cinematography. The original  story, by Paul Dehn and James Bernard, won an Academy Award. 

The Return of Dracula (1958)

 

THE RETURN OF DRACULA  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Paul Landres

    Francis Lederer, Norma Eberhardt, Ray Stricklyn,

    John Wengraf, Virginia Vincent, Gage Clarke

The count turns up in a small California town, still looking for necks to bite and still averse to mirrors, crucifixes, daylight and wooden stakes through the heart. An effective, low-budget creepshow, in black and white except for a momentary splash of blood-red color. Lederer makes a menacing Dracula, and the Dies Irae from the old Latin funeral Mass figures prominently in the musical score. 

The Road To Hong Kong (1962)

 

THE ROAD TO HONG KONG  (1962)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Panama

    Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Joan Collins, 

    Robert Morley, Walter Gotell, Dorothy Lamour

Ski Nose and the Groaner travel to India, Tibet, Hong Kong and the moon in their last itinerant adventure, a comedy that's just as laid back and disposable as all the other "Road" movies. The boys are looking older, still playing vaudevillians in the space age, trading wisecracks and recycling material they'd been doing together for years. There's even an eating-machine gag that's a direct steal from Chaplin's "Modern Times". Joan Collins supplies most of the eye candy, but Dorothy Lamour appears briefly, too, and the cameos are fun.

Showdown At Boot Hill (1958)

 

SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Gene Fowler Jr.

    Charles Bronson, John Carradine, Fintan Meyler,

    Robert Hutton, Paul Maxey, Argentina Brunetti

This is exactly the kind of movie that would've slipped through the cracks in the 1950s, playing on the bottom half of a drive-in double feature. Charles Bronson, still doing mostly secondary roles and television work, plays a U.S. marshall who rides into town to serve an arrest warrant and wears out his welcome instantly by killing the wanted man - a respected local citizen - in a gunfight. The townspeople want the marshall dead or worse, but he sticks around because there's a pretty young lady serving meals over at the hotel, and because he still wants to collect the $200 reward. There's a showdown at Boot Hill eventually, but it's not what you'd expect in a movie called "Showdown At Boot Hill". The underlying themes - fear and loneliness - are not what you'd expect, either. Bronson, who was a commanding screen presence long before he made the A list, has the lethal restraint of a coiled rattlesnake, while John Carradine, doing brisk business as the community's  barber, doctor, preacher and undertaker, provides colorful and (for him, anyway) understated support.

Permissive (1970)

PERMISSIVE  (1970)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Lindsay Shonteff

    Maggie Stride, Gay Singleton, Gilbert Wynne,

    Alan Gorrie, Stuart Francis, Debbie Bowen

Groupies and rockers hook up and mope around without seeming to care much about anything. Then one of the rockers gets hit by a car and there's a catfight and one of the groupies kills herself. The folk-rock music on the soundtrack is incessant and repetitive and gets kind of old. At least the groupies are cute. 

Among Those Present (1921)

 

AMONG THOSE PRESENT  (1921)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Fred C. Newmeyer

    Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Aggie Herring,

    James T. Kelley, William Gillespie, Vera White

Harold Lloyd crashes a society event and encounters a fox, a lion, a dog, a cat, a skunk, a snake, a bear, a horse, a bird, a goose and a goat. He also loses his pants. Any resemblance between Mildred Davis in this film and Mary Pickford in most of hers is probably not coincidental.