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.