The Last Duel (2021)

THE LAST DUEL  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Ridley Scott

    Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer,

    Harriet Walter, Ben Affleck, Martin Csokas

In 14th-century France, two knights (actually a knight and a squire) go at each other with lances and swords, axes and daggers, over a woman who claims she's been raped. The story plays out in three parts, each telling the "truth" about what happened from a different point of view. There are some similarities to "Gladiator" (another Ridley Scott film), but without the same emotional impact. Part of the problem is that the writers (Dam0n, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener) write themselves into a box. Once it's established that men are brutes and women are victims, there's really nowhere to go, and the only character worth caring about - the woman - is powerless. Still, it's Ridley Scott, who knows how to stage a battle (or a duel), the production design and Darius Wolski's cinematography capture a world that's eternally cold and gray, and Harry Gregson-Williams' music sounds a lot like Hans Zimmer. In a story that's modeled on "Rashomon", it's no accident that Damon's character is essentially a samurai, and Damon, as the impulsive, illiterate, rough-mannered knight, gives the movie's most compelling performance. 

The Last Castle (2001)

THE LAST CASTLE  (2001)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Rod Lurie

    Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo,

    Steve Burton, Delroy Lindo, Clifton Collins Jr.,

    Paul Calderon, Brian Goodman, Jeremy Childs

An exciting action fantasy (and a literal flag-waver) set in a military prison, starring Robert Redford as a general doing hard time and James Gandolfini as the martinet colonel who runs the joint with an iron fist. The story's on the level of a comic book, but as comic books go, it's a good one, outlandish and viscerally satisfying. You know exactly who to root for, and against, and Redford gives it real movie-star class. The ending's ambiguous - there's that thing with the flag - leaving you to wonder who's won, who's lost, and what, if anything, has been accomplished.

Lamb (2021)

LAMB  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Valdimar Jóhansson

    Noomi Rapace, Hilmer Snaer Gudnason, 

    Björn Hlynur Haraldsson

A couple living on a remote sheep farm take in a newborn lamb and care for it as if it were a human child. Which sounds odd, I guess, but this is no ordinary lamb. A movie that on paper shouldn't work, and on screen somehow does, suggesting a world gone slightly out of balance, or one that humans are out of balance with. A quietly creepy folktale, much of it wordless, filmed on location in Iceland and a prize winner at Cannes. Nicely played by its human cast, along with some exceptionally expressive (and disturbing) sheep.

The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)

 

THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR  (1933)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: James Whale

    Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Paul Lukas,

    Gloria Stuart, Jean Dixon, Charley Grapewin,

    Walter Pidgeon, Donald Cook, Reginald Mason

In what sounds like it should be a Hitchcock movie, an attorney defending a man who's murdered his wife finds some disturbing parallels between the killer's domestic situation and his own. Could the Wonderful Wizard of Oz get away with murder himself? He's working on it. If the sets in the prison scenes look familiar, it's because they were used before, in Whale's "Frankenstein".

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)

 

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER  (1967)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Stanley Kramer

    Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier,

    Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, Roy Glenn,

    Cecil Kellaway, Isabell Sanford, Virginia Christine

In their last movie together, Tracy and Hepburn play Matt and Christina Drayton, an old-school liberal couple forced to come to terms with their daughter's decision to marry a black man. That their prospective son-in-law is a doctor played by Sidney Poitier doesn't hurt, but still. Christina quickly becomes supportive, but Matt sees only trouble ahead. The movie's a series of tense conversations between various combinations of characters over drinks before dinner - the doctor's parents are a part of this, too - leading up to a climactic speech by Tracy, which resolves things pretty much the way you'd expect it to. It's sincerely intended, a bit overstated and very well-acted: the quintessential Stanley Kramer movie. Kramer took a big risk making it. Tracy, who was 67 and looked about 90, was in bad shape and uninsurable. He got through it, barely, delivered his last great performance, and died two weeks after the picture wrapped.

Idaho Transfer (1973)

 

IDAHO TRANSFER  (1973)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Peter Fonda

    Kelly Bohanon, Kevin Hearst, Caroline Hildebrand,

    Keith Carradine, Dale Hopkins, Ted D'Arms

Offbeat ec0 sci-fi about some young researchers who transport themselves into the future, hoping to survive and maybe help save whatever's left of humanity in the wake of a looming environmental apocalypse. The effects are low-tech and the story meanders, but the barren Idaho landscapes are strikingly shot. Considering the time the movie was made, the age of its protagonists and the fact that Peter Fonda was directing it, you wonder how come nobody's smoking pot. Somebody had to be lighting up off-camera, for sure. 

Secret Honor (1984)

 

SECRET HONOR  (1984)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Altman

    Philip Baker Hall

Richard Nixon, a bottle of Scotch, a Bible, a clock, four video monitors, the portraits of a half-dozen ex-presidents (plus Henry Kissinger), a piano, a tape recorder and a loaded gun. A movie based on a one-man play that doesn't claim to stick to the facts, but uses Nixon, in an imaginary conversation with himself, to try to get at the ghosts and demons that drove him to power and disgrace. Philip Baker Hall doesn't try to "do" Nixon, either, (his model seems to be George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove"), but he delivers a devastating portrait of a man who sold his soul long ago and has never stopped making payment. He talks to the paintings. He barks like a dog. He raves and rages in an endless stream of vitriolic expletives, switchbacks and non-sequiturs, self-justification and self-loathing duking it out for what's left of his tormented psyche. The effect is literally damning. 

Philip Baker Hall

(1931-2022)

The King's Man (2021)

 

THE KING'S MAN  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Matthew Vaughn 

    Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans,

    Harris Dickinson, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew Goode,

    Charles Dance, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Brühl

The first thing you notice about this movie, if you've seen the two previous "Kingsman" films, is that it's different from the rest. Not completely, but a lot. The Savile Row tailor shop's the same, and the gents are still checking into Fitting Room 1 for their "oxfords, not brogues." But the time frame's 100 years earlier - World War One - and it's an origin story, about how the elite band of impeccably attired Kingsman agents came to be. It's less transgressive slapstick and more escapist adventure this time around. There are no exploding heads, and nobody proposes a bit of buggery as a reward for saving the world. By reaching so far back - the story actually begins with the Boer War - it leaves the future of the franchise wide open. In an apparent competition to see which villain can go more shamelessly over the top, Rhys Ifans as Rasputin battles Matthew Goode's Scottish accent to a draw.

King Kong (1933)

 

KING KONG  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

    Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot,

    Frank Reicher, Sam Hardy, Noble Johnson

"Oh, no. It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."

The Howl (1970)

 

THE HOWL  (1970)  ¢ ¢

    D: Tinto Brass

    Tina Aumont, Gigi Proletti, Nino Segurini,

    Germano Longo, Osiride Pevarello, Giorgio Gruden

A man gets a woman released from prison, or a mental institution, it's not clear which, and then they're getting married, and then the woman runs off with another guy, 

and they end up in a war and go to hell and run into a lot 

of naked hippies, this being a movie shot around 1969. 93 minutes of avant-garde anarchy from the auteur who would eventually make "Caligula". "It's a trap," the woman repeats over and over on her way to the altar. By the time 

the movie's over, you might feel that way, too.

The Ice Follies of 1939 (1939)

THE ICE FOLLIES OF 1939  (1939)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D:  Reinhold Schunzel

    Joan Crawford, James Stewart, Lew Ayres,

    Lewis Stone, Lionel Stander, Bess Ehrhardt

Stewart and Crawford play ice skaters who decide to get married at a point when they're both broke and out of work. Ambition causes them to spend their first year together apart, during which time she becomes a movie star and he struggles to mount an elaborate ice show. The storytelling is slight, but fans of ice shows should appreciate the skating sequences. The studio was MGM, so the production values are high-end, and Technicolor kicks in for the climactic production number. 

The Kid Brother (1927)

 

THE KID BROTHER  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ted Wilde

    Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James, 

    Leo Willis, Olin Francis, Constantine Romanoff

Harold falls for a girl in a medicine show and there's some stolen money and a couple of crooks and a derelict ship and a monkey and a lynch mob and chases - a lot of them. Lloyd's next-to-last silent comedy, and his own personal favorite of all his films, with some scene-stealing work by the monkey.

Quote File / Take 21

 

Some lines from the movies of Ray Liotta:

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to 

  be a gangster."

  Liotta in "GoodFellas"

"You're a convicted inmate on death row. What five 

  albums would you pick?"

  Liotta in "Turbulence"

"You reach a point in your life where you realize 

  that greatness isn't going to happen. So you settle 

  for survival."

  Liotta in "Slow Burn"

"Being right is not a bullet-proof vest, Freddy."

  Liotta to Sylvester Stallone in "Cop Land"

"Can you get me some more of that water buffalo 

  tranquilizer?"

  Liotta to Denis Leary in "Operation Dumbo Drop"

"Hey, rookie. You were good."

  Liotta to Burt Lancaster in "Field of Dreams"

(1955-2022)

Frankenstein (1931)

 

FRANKENSTEIN  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: James Whale

    Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff,

    John Boles, Edward Van Sloan, Frederick Kerr,

    Dwight Frye, Lionel Belmore, Marilyn Harris

The original, with Karloff as the monster.