The Opposite Sex (1956)

 

THE OPPOSITE SEX  (1956)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: David Miller

    June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, 

    Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen,

    Joan Blondell, Agnes Moorehead, Jeff Richards,

    Charlotte Greenwood, Bill Goodwin, Sam Levene

Glitz and gossip, with June Allyson as the good-girl wife of a Broadway producer and Joan Collins vamping it up as the Other Woman. A remake of 1939's "The Women", this time with musical numbers in garish color and a few men in the cast. It's nonstop bitchiness, but those ladies sure are well-dressed. Allyson and Joan Blondell, at different times, were both married to Dick Powell.

Time After Time (1979)

 

TIME AFTER TIME  (1979)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Nicholas Meyer

    Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, David Warner,

    Charles Cioffi, Patti D'Arbanville, Antonia Katsaros

A time-travel thriller and fantasy romance in which H.G. Wells rides his time machine into the future to track down Jack the Ripper. Meyer's more interested the fish-out-of-water time-travel stuff than the detective story - the Victorian Wells touching down in a world of McDonald's fries and motorcars and garbage disposals and the news on TV. Then Jack slips back into his old bad habits, and it's up to Wells to stop him before he can carve up Mary Steenburgen. With David Warner's name in the credits, you can guess who plays Jack the Ripper, but then, Warner did play Bob Cratchit once, and Malcolm McDowell, who plays Wells, made "A Clockwork Orange" and "Caligula", so the casting could've gone either way.

David Warner

(1941-2022)

Mothra vs, Godzilla (1964)

 

MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA  (1964)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ishirô Honda

    Akira Takarada, Yuriko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi,

    Yû Fujiki, Kenji Sahara, Emi Itô, Yumi Itô

When a giant egg containing the offspring of Mothra ends up on a Japanese beach and Godzilla crawls out of the ground closeby, you just know a battle of the monsters is about to occur. It happens when the egg hatches and the junior Mothra twins take on the 400-foot-tall, fire-breathing reptile. That would seem to be a mismatch, but the not-so-little, would-be caterpillars have a few tricks up their sleeves, or they would, if, you know, they had sleeves. Also, the tiny, singing fairy girls are cute. 

Promising Young Woman (2020)

 

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Emerald Fennell

    Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie,

    Jennifer Coolidge, Chris Lowell, Alfred Molina,

    Adam Brody, Clancy Brown, Lorna Scott

A feminist psycho thriller starring Carey Mulligan as Cassie Thomas, a med-school dropout working as a barista and exacting some serious revenge for an incident that took place a few years before. It seems there was a party where everybody got drunk and a woman named Nina - Cassie's best friend - was assaulted. Nina never recovered and Cassie quit school, while their male colleagues - the rapists - moved on to successful careers. Cassie figures some payback is due, or at least some justice. There's a suggestion of Jodie Foster's "The Brave One" in this, the difference being that Cassie's not out to kill anybody. She corners her targets and maneuvers them out from behind their lies and excuses to confront their own guilt, acting crazy enough to make them believe something real bad will happen if they don't do that. It's good, formula moviemaking, with the deck stacked in favor of its unhinged protagonist, who's (mostly) sympathetic, and against the men in the story, who are (almost all) sleazy creeps. Lines like "We were kids then" and "We were all drunk" and "Something like this could ruin a young man's life" sound especially lame and pathetic in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The Nutty Professor (1963)

THE NUTTY PROFESSOR  (1963)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D:  Jerry Lewis

    Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore,

    Kathleen Freeman, Howard Morris,

    Med Flory, Marvin Kaplan, Henry Gibson

A comic riff on "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", in which the world's nerdiest college chemistry teacher ingests an experimental formula and becomes the world's smarmiest lounge lizard. Jerry Lewis plays both roles in what's generally considered to be his masterpiece, and even if you're not a big fan of the guy, a lot of what he does here is pretty darn funny. To what extent it reflects the real Jerry Lewis is open to speculation. Stella Stevens plays the girl who falls for both Jerrys - her character's name is "Stella" - and Henry Gibson, billed last in the credits, appears briefly as a student named "Gibson". 

Remember My Name (1978)

REMEMBER MY NAME  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Alan Rudolph

    Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Perkins, Berry Berenson,

    Moses Gunn, Jeff Goldblum, Alfre Woodard

A woman who's just finished a 12-year stretch for murder tracks down her ex-husband who's moved on to a new life with a new wife, and starts stalking them. Geraldine Chaplin, needle thin and batshit crazy, gives a chilling performance in one of those Alan Rudolph movies that seems to exist in its own offbeat universe more than in any real one. Perkins and Berenson were married in real life. He died of AIDS in 1992. She was on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Our Town (2003)

 

OUR TOWN  (2003)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: James Naughton

    Paul Newman, Jane Curtin, Frank Converse,

    Jayne Atkinson, Jeffrey DeMunn, Ben Fox,

    Maggie Lacey, Conor Donovan, Kristen Hahn

Life, death and everything in between in a small town in early 20th-century New Hampshire. A filmed transcription of Thornton Wilder's famously spare, often staged, uniquely American play, with Paul Newman in a late-career theatrical role as the Stage Manager.

Mr. Wong, Detective (1938)

 

MR. WONG, DETECTIVE  (1938)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Nigh

    Boris Karloff, Grant Withers, Evelyn Brent,

    John St. Polis, William Gould, Hooper Atchley,

    Lucien Prival, John Hamilton, Wilbur Mack

An okay whodunit in which a deadly chemical formula appears to be connected to a couple of murders. There are more than enough suspects on hand, and they can't all be guilty, but most of them sure act that way. Good thing Mr. Wong is on the case. Karloff's first appearance as the elegant Chinese detective. 

Freebie and the Bean (1974)

 

FREEBIE AND THE BEAN  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Richard Rush

    Alan Arkin, James Caan, Jack Kruschen,

    Loretta Swit, Valerie Harper, Alex Rocco,

    Christopher Morley, Paul Koslo, Mike Kellin

"Dirty Harry" meets "The Blues Brothers" in a slapstick, car-wreck action thriller about a pair of San Francisco police detectives assigned to keep a numbers boss alive over the Super Bowl weekend. Arkin and Caan make a good, odd-couple team. The movie's fast and funny and not always politically correct. The level of vehicular mayhem is insane. 

James Caan

(1940-2022)

Shark Bait (2022)

 

SHARK BAIT  (2022)  ¢ 1/2

    D: James Nunn

    Holly Earl, Jack Trueman, Catherine Hannay,

    Malachi Pullar-Latchman, Thomas Flynn, Manuel Cauchi

Five spring-break party animals with one functioning brain between them steal a couple of jet skis and head out into the open sea. What could go wrong? Hint: The movie's called "Shark Bait". 

Flashback: Child Actors

 

    When Tommy Kirk died last September, a lot of younger moviegoers, if they reacted to the news at all, probably said, "Tommy who?"

    Kirk was 79. He'd been a child star at Disney in the '50s and '60s. He was on "The Mickey Mouse Club" and he was the kid in "Old Yeller" and he costarred with Fred MacMurray in the "Shaggy Dog" and "Flubber" movies, and he made a couple of beach-party movies and a couple of low-budget horrors, before kind of fading away. 

    He got canned at Disney eventually. Kirk claimed it was because he was gay and that Uncle Walt personally fired him. 

    With room for variations, it's a familiar story. The transition from child star to adult with a movie career can be tricky. A few actors make it. A lot of them don't. 

    Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland survived the Golden Age at MGM and went on to up-and-down lives and careers. (Rooney, who made his first screen appearance at age six and his last in his 90s, probably holds the record for career longevity.) By contrast, their contemporaries, Freddie Bartholomew and Deanna Durbin, were both out of the business by the time they turned 30.

    Jackie Coogan (1921's "The Kid") and Jackie Cooper (1931's "The Champ") both found success years later on television. 

    Dean Stockwell, a child star in the '40s, had an enduring career as a character actor. 

    Brandon De Wilde, the kid who begged Alan Ladd to come back in "Shane" (1953) came back to play Paul Newman's nephew in "Hud" (1963). Tim Considine, another Disney star, was the battle-damaged soldier George C. Scott slapped in "Patton"(1970). Jackie Earle Haley, who played one of the "Bad News Bears" in 1976 and one of the townies in "Breaking Away" (1979), returned as a child molester in "Little Children" (2006) and Rorschach in "Watchmen" (2009). 

    Juliette Lewis (Nick Nolte's daughter in "Cape Fear") and Christina Ricci (Wednesday in "The Addams Family") have found steady work in TV and indie films. 

    Natalie Portman (the aspiring young assassin in "The Professional"), Kristen Stewart (Jodie Foster's daughter in "Panic Room") and Saoirse Ronan (the girl who would someday be Vanessa Redgrave in "Atonement") have all moved on to adult stardom. 

    Of all of them, Foster has had the most wide-ranging career. On camera from the time she could walk and scary smart, she played a prostitute at 13 in "Taxi Driver" (1976), took time off to go to Yale, won a couple of Oscars, and went on to direct. Like some of the others, she could be around a long time yet, and her career is an ongoing work in progress. 

    Those are some of the juvenile performers who more or less managed the challenge of working beyond adolescence. Others (a lot of them) retired to non-acting lives. A few (like Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer) ran into serious real-life trouble. 

    The pigeon-hole effect is a factor in all this. Become too successful in a certain kind of role (like a kid playing a kid) and it's hard for casting directors to see you as anything else. Child actors grow up at their peril. And they all grow up. 

    In a profession notorious for its uncertainty, it's not enough to be good. You've got to persist, even as your voice changes and certain physical features evolve in noticeable ways. And it doesn't hurt to be lucky.

Last Night In Soho (2021)

 

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edgar Wright

    Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor Joy, Matt Smith,

    Diana Rigg, Michael Ajao, Synnove Karlsen, 

    Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham, Aimee Cassettari

A girl named Eloise, who's obsessed with the 1960s, moves to London to study fashion design, and starts dreaming her way back in time. Things get crazy when the dreams turn dark and start to blur with her waking life. Back in the '60s, she encounters a girl named Sandie, who could be a muse, or a doppelgänger, or maybe a ghost. It's like "Suspiria" moved to the UK, just as creepy, but somehow not as cold and remote. The scenes in which Eloise and Sandie appear together, as mirror images (or possibly the same person) are inventively done. And speaking of the '60s, Terence Stamp. And Rita Tushingham. And in her last movie role, Diana Rigg.

The Last of the Secret Agents? (1965)

 

THE LAST OF THE SECRET AGENTS?  (1965)  ¢ ¢

    D: Norman Abbott

    Marty Allen, Steve Rossi, John Williams, 

    Nancy Sinatra, Lou Jacobi, Theodore Marcuse,

    Sig Ruman, Harvey Korman, Edy Williams

Two screw-up nightclub performers get hired on as spies tracking a master criminal who wants to steal the Venus de Milo. (He's got the arms, and now he wants the rest of her.) A Bond-era spoof with a touch of zany surrealism in some of the gags, and a lot of slapstick silliness. Allen and Rossi were a popular comedy team modeled on Martin and Lewis: a suave crooner playing straight man to a moron. Rossi's the crooner. Allen's the pudgy one with the bug eyes and frizzy hair. Director Norman Abbott was Bud Abbott's nephew. It shows.

The Last Flight (1931)

 

THE LAST FLIGHT  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Dieterle

    Richard Barthelmess, Helen Chandler, David Manners,

    John Mack Brown, Elliott Nugent, Walter Byron

World War One flyboys, all of them damaged, go to Paris after the Armistice to drink and forget. They meet a swell girl named Nikki, and there's a lot more drinking, and a trip to Pere Lachaise Cemetery and to Portugal, and more drinking, and a bullfight. An unusual movie, one of the first to take a crack at the Lost Generation, like a screwball comedy by Hemingway, if you can imagine something like that. The script is by John Monk Saunders, who wrote "Wings" and was married to Fay Wray.