Mystery, Alaska (1999)

MYSTERY, ALASKA  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jay Roach

    Russell Crowe, Hank Azaria, Burt Reynolds,

    Mary McCormack, Colm Meany, Maury Chaykin,

    Michael Buie, Adam Beach, Michael McKean

Mystery, Alaska, is a small town in the middle of nowhere that in the absence of anything else to do, lives and breathes hockey. The town's too remote to play other teams, so the guys play "pond hockey" against each other in a weekly civic event called the "Saturday Game". They're fast and they know how to skate, but do they really stand a chance when the New York Rangers come to town? A formula, feel-good sports movie that comes down to the inevitable, climactic match between the unbeatable major leaguers and the scrappy amateur underdogs - a setup that's as predictable as it is foolproof. There are enough small-town subplots to suggest the potential for a decent television series. (Think "Northern Exposure" with sticks and skates.) The mystery is why it didn't become one.

711 Ocean Drive (1950)

711 OCEAN DRIVE  (1950)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joseph M. Newman

    Edmond O'Brien,  Joanne Dru, Otto Kruger,

    Don Porter, Dorothy Patrick, Robert Osterloh,

    Barry Kelley, Howard St. John, Sammy White

Edmond O'Brien plays a phone-company technician who breaks into the bookmaking racket and ends up running the whole California operation. When the big boys back East decide they want a cut of the action, he thinks he can take them on, too, but he forgets he's in a film noir and his luck has to run out, which it does. The climax was shot on location at Boulder Dam, but the movie's kind of slow getting there, and feels longer than its one hour and 42 minutes.

River Queen (2005)

 

RIVER QUEEN  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Vincent Ward

    Samantha Morton, Cliff Curtis, Kiefer Sutherland,

    David Rawiri Pene, Tremuera Morrison, Stephen Rea

This takes place around 1860 in New Zealand, where Maori tribesmen are staging a last-ditch rebellion against the British who are taking their land. Samantha Morton plays a woman named Sarah, caught between warring cultures as she tries to find and protect her mixed-race son. It'a like "The Last of the Mohicans" Down Under, with riverscapes you could get lost in, an exciting and sometimes brutal adventure romance. The soundtrack features a haunting version of "Danny Boy" sung in Maori, something you probably won't find in any other film.

Airplane! (1980)

 

AIRPLANE!  (1980)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

    Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen,

    Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

    Robert Stack, Kenneth Tobey, Stephen Stucker, 

    Maureen McGovern, Ethel Merman, Jill Whelan

Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

And Merry Christmas

Untamed Women (1952)

 

UNTAMED WOMEN  (1952)  ¢ 1/2

    D: W. Merle Connell

    Mikel Conrad, Doris Merrick, Richard Monahan,

    Mark Lowell, Morgan Jones, Midge Ware,

    Judy Brubaker, Carol Brewster, Lyle Talbot

A stilted, plodding adventure in which a bomber crew washes up on a Pacific island inhabited by a tribe of primitive but fashion-savvy women. The women dance and pose like '50s swimsuit models (which they probably were), and speaketh English in words not heard in everyday speech since the 17th century. Shakespeare it ain't, and the flyboys sport some of the worst-looking ten-day-old beards ever, but at least the untamed women are cute.

The Way West (1967)

 

THE WAY WEST  (1967)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Andrew V. McLaglen

    Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark,

    Lola Albright, Jack Elam, Sally Field, Stubby Kaye,

    Michael McGreevey, Roy Glenn, Harry Carey Jr.

Widmark, Mitchum and Douglas point the wagons west and lead a bunch of settlers across the plains to Oregon. This plays like an offshoot of "How the West Was Won", with impressive production values, spectacular landscapes, a rousing musical score and a clunky script. Mitchum, as a scout who's going blind, comes off the best. Sally Field, in her first big-screen role, plays an impetuous teenager named Mercy - Gidget out on the prairie.

Desert Island Women / Take 3

 

Movies become more interesting 

when these women show up in them:

Rosamund Pike

Eva Green

Saoirse Ronan

Emma Stone

Kristen Stewart

Samantha Morton

Michelle Rodriguez

Amy Adams

Carey Mulligan

Noomi Rapace

The Ref (1994)

 

THE REF  (1994)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ted Demme

    Denis Leary, Judy Davis, Kevin Spacey,

    Raymond J. Barry, Richard Bright, Christine Baranski,

    J.K. Simmons, Adam Lefevre, Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.

A funny, profanity-laced comedy about a burglar who takes a bickering suburban couple hostage and finds his getaway plans going haywire in ways he could never imagine. A holiday movie, more or less, that's pretty much devoid of the usual holiday-movie sweetness. Any picture in which Judy Davis can cast a withering glance at Kevin Spacey and deliver a line like "Why don't you eat me?" has got to be worth looking at.

Colleen (1936)

 

COLLEEN  (1936)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alfred E. Green

    Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell,

    Jack Oakie, Hugh Herbert, Louise Fazenda,

    Marie Wilson, Berton Churchill, Hobart Cavanaugh

Dick's charming, Ruby's cute, Jack's obnoxious and Joan's nobody's fool in a mostly disposable Warner Bros musical about, well, the story doesn't really matter. Busby Berkeley wasn't involved, but his influence on the production numbers is obvious. Oakie and Blondell hoofing it through "Boulevardier From the Bronx" is the unexpected highlight.

Escape From L.A. (1996)

 

ESCAPE FROM L.A.  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Carpenter

    Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi, Stacy Keach,

    A.J. Langer, George Corraface, Michelle Forbes,

    Pam Grier, Cliff Robertson, Peter Fonda

In the sequel to "Escape From New York", snarlin', one-eyed rogue warrior Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) finds himself in a dystopian Los Angeles on a mission to rescue or kill the president's runaway daughter and maybe save the United States from a hostile invasion. Escapist action with plenty of attitude and Russell at his bad-ass best. The depiction of the American president (Cliff Robertson) as a venal, fear-mongering asshole might've seemed a little far-fetched back then. After the 2016 election, not so much.

Mon Oncle (1958)

MON ONCLE  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    Jacques Tati

    Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie,

    Alain Bécourt, Yvonne Arnaud, Betty Schneider

Jacques Tati's average-looking Everyman, Mr. Hulot, rides a bicycle between two worlds. There's the world he lives in - noisy, chaotic and full of life, defined by its bars, shops, horsecarts, wild packs of boys and dogs, and trash in the streets. And there's the world of the Arpel family, Hulot's sister and brother-in-law - modern, clean, orderly, quiet and sterile, defined by its compulsive neatness, a ridiculous gurgling fountain, the latest gadgets and conveniences, and a lot of empty, unused space. Tati finds comic absurdity in both worlds, but it's no secret which one he prefers. 

These Amazing Shadows (2011)

 

THESE AMAZING SHADOWS  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Paul Mariano, Kurt Norton

A lively collection of film clips highlight this documentary look at the movies the Library of Congress has named to the National Film Registry. The list includes everything from home movies to "2001", "The Birth of a Nation" to Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Rob Reiner, John Waters, Caleb Deschanel, Christopher Nolan and Peter Coyote are among those weighing in with their insights and observations. If you miss the ubiquitous cartoon concessions ad that used to play in the middle of double features, the one that started with the jingle, "Let's all go to the lobby," relax. That's in the National Film Registry, too.

Love Birds (2011)

 

LOVE BIRDS  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Paul Murphy 

    Rhys Darby, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Brown,

    Faye Smythe, Wesley Dowdell, Alvin Maharaj

    Emily Barclay, Craig Hall, David Fane

A romantic comedy about a man, a woman  and a duck. You'd expect a movie like this to choke on its own cuteness, but it's just quirky enough to counter that. Sally Hawkins and the music of Queen are a big plus. Made in New Zealand. The duck's name is Pierre. 

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

 

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Martin McDonagh

    Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon,

    Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, David Pearse

This all takes place in 1923 on an island off the Irish coast. The Civil War's going on, and from the island you can hear the gunshots and see the smoke from the explosions across the water. The island is a place of suffocating closeness, the sort of place where there are no secrets and everybody knows everybody else way too well. Two of those islanders are Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), old friends who meet up most afternoons to walk down to the pub and drink a pint together. Then one day, out of nowhere, Colm tells Padraic he doesn't like him anymore and wants nothing to do with him. Padraic is crushed. Colm is adamant. And the movie proceeds from there. There's no easy sentiment in Martin McDonagh's script, but a lot of emotional depth, and it's brilliantly acted by everybody, with especially fine work by Farrell as the "dull" but good-natured Padraic and Barry Keoghan as an abused (and damaged) kid named Dominic, who's more perceptive than he first appears. In a scene late in the film, Dominic and Padraic's sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) are standing together looking out at the lake when Dominic, twisting himself into physical and emotional knots, works up the courage to ask Siobhan if she'd like to be something more than just neighbors and friends. She tells him no in the nicest way possible, and he tries to shrug it off, but there's no hiding the fact that he's devastated. The exchange is as achingly honest as it is inevitable, and the whole movie's like that. It cuts to the bone.

Twenty Bucks (1993)

 

TWENTY BUCKS  (1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Keva Rosenfeld

    Linda Hunt, Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue, 

    Christopher Lloyd, Steve Buscemi, Melora Walters,

    Gladys Knight, William H. Macy, Diane Baker,

    Jeremy Piven, Rosemary Murphy, Spalding Gray

A collection of stories all connected to a $20 bill as it passes from hand to hand. This started out in the 1930s as an unfilmed screenplay by Endre Bolem, and finally made it to the screen some 60 years later as an indie production. (Bolem's son Leslie had a hand in the finished script.) The ensemble includes Christopher Lloyd as a coldly efficient armed robber, Diane Baker as a woman whose husband dies playing bingo, and Melora Walters as a stripper at a bachelor party who later turns up showing caskets at a funeral home. Linda Hunt plays a character whose luck, or lack of it, brings her into contact with the bill more than anybody else. 

You Won't Be Alone (2022)

 

YOU WON'T BE ALONE  (2022)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Goran Stolevski

    Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert,

    Sara Klimoska, Felix Maritaud, Arta Dobroshi

Earthy folktale horror from Macedonia about a girl trying to escape a witch's curse. Slow-moving and episodic, with a protagonist who can change shapes and identities in an environment that would be rough to live in even if you weren't suspected of being a witch. One of the girl's incarnations is Noomi Rapace.

Slap Shot (1977)

 

SLAP SHOT  (1977)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Roy Hill

    Paul Newman, Michael Ontkean, Strother Martin,

    Lindsay Crouse, Jennifer Warren, Melinda Dillon, 

    Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson, David Hanson,

    M. Emmett Walsh, Swoosie Kurtz, Paul Dooley

A raucous jock comedy with a distinctly woking-class edge, starring Paul Newman as the player/coach of a rust-belt minor-league hockey team called the Charlestown Chiefs. The local mill is closing (and with it goes the team's paying fan base) and the Chiefs are slumping through what looks to be their final season, when the general manager (Strother Martin) signs the brawling but intellectually challenged Hanson brothers, three goons with matching haircuts and eyeglasses, along with sharp elbows and high sticks. The Chiefs start to win. So you get the inevitable lead-up to the big game for the league trophy, but there's an underlying fatalism about it all. These guys are not going on to the NHL. They're not going anywhere that's any different from where they've been. The diners and bars and horsing around on the team bus are as good as it gets. And the screaming fans. And the drop of the puck. And the blood on the ice. 

Thanksgiving (2023)

 

THANKSGIVING  (2023)  ¢ ¢

    D: Eli Roth

    Patrick Dempsey, Nell Verlaque, Jalen Thomas Brooks,

    Gabriel Davenport, Milo Manheim, Addison Rae

    Tomaso Sanelli, Joe Delfin, Rick Hoffman,

    Gina Gershon, Jenna Warren, Karen Cliche

A blood-and-guts slasher movie that opens on Black Friday (actually Black Thursday Night) with a mob of rabid shoppers breaking down the doors of a department store and trampling anybody who stands between them and a hundred free waffle irons. Skip ahead a year, and people involved in the riot are turning up dead, dispatched and dismembered in gory, horrible ways. It's Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, and the trimmings include characters being beheaded, eviscerated, stabbed with a pitchfork, chopped with an ax, sliced with a power saw and baked alive in an industrial-sized oven. That's good for some shock value, but there's nothing original, or even especially interesting, going on here, the plot and characters pulled straight out of the timeworn, holiday-themed, slasher-movie playbook. You don't even care who the killer is, really. It just doesn't matter. The film started out as one of the fake trailers in "Grindhouse" (2007). The trailer was better than this.

Who Is Bill Rebane? (2021)

 

WHO IS BILL REBANE?  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: David Cairns

At some point in this documentary, you learn that Bill Rebane once had an offer to direct a movie for American International, but made the mistake of telling Samuel Arkoff he didn't like the script. So Rebane never made it to Hollywood, and instead built his own studio in rural Wisconsin, where he turned out such classics as "The Demons of Ludlow", "The Capture of Bigfoot" and "The Giant Spider Invasion". Writer/director David Cairns treats Rebane as the auteur he aspired to be, the same way Mark Cousins (who appears briefly as a witness) might approach a piece on Orson Welles. That Rebane had limited storytelling skills and created monsters out of Volkswagens hardly seems to matter. What does matter is that, working on the margins and against ridiculous odds, he got his movies made. The artistry might be minimal, but the dedication that went into it was not. Bill Rebane. Wisconsin's own Ed Wood.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING 

    D: George Miller                        (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Tilda Swinton,  Idris Elba, Burcu Gölgedar,

    Aamito Lagum, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yuksel

An expert in the history of storytelling travels to Istanbul to attend a convention of people who are experts in the history of storytelling. In a curiosity shop, she buys a small bottle that appears to have little value beyond the possibility that it might contain a story, which it does. It's the old genie-(or djinn)-in-a-bottle tale, all tied up with the number three, the color red, and the matter of being careful what you wish for when it comes to making a wish. Tilda Swinton plays the woman who buys the bottle, Idris Elba plays the djinn she releases when she opens it, and the movie is mostly the two of them telling and talking about stories. Director George Miller is the guy who made the Mad Max movies, but this is more like something you'd expect from Guillermo del Toro, intelligent, literate and beautifully imagined, a fantasy for grownups. So go ahead. Make three wishes. But you know what they say. Be careful. There's always a catch.

Zaza (1923)

 

ZAZA  (1923)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alan Dwan

    Gloria Swanson, H.B. Warner, Mary Thurman, 

    Lucille La Verne, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Yvonne Hughes

Gloria Swanson pulls out all the stops as a temperamental music-hall headliner who falls (literally) for an elegant but stiff-mannered diplomat. Swanson was one of the great stars of the 1920s, and there's a reason for that - she was good - but in this one, she's way over the top: silent-movie acting that makes silent-movie acting look like silent-movie acting, a prelude to her classically deranged performance in "Sunset Blvd." Lucille La Verne steals a moment or two as Zaza's alcoholic aunt, and Gloria and Mary Thurman duke it out in a memorable catfight. 

Desert Island Characters / Take 2

 

More actors who had notable careers in (mostly) supporting roles: 

                             John Vernon

                             Claude Akins

                             William Schallert

                             Lloyd Nolan

                             Lionel Stander

                             Harry Morgan

                             Akim Tamiroff

                             Simon Oakland

                             Murray Hamilton

                             Harry Dean Stanton

War of the Planets (1966)

 

WAR OF THE PLANETS  (1966)  ¢ ¢

    D: Anthony M. Dawson

    Tony Russell, Jane Fate, Franco Nero, Carlo Giustini,

    Enzo Fiermonte, Bert Raho, Claudio Scarchilli

Deadly green light that looks like green smoke when you see it up close starts attacking space stations and turning their passengers into zombies. Daring astronauts take off in rockets that look like Crackerjack toys and fight off the deadly green light with laser guns that look like miniature flame throwers. It's all pretty innocuous, but there are worse low-budget sci-fi movies out there. This one even has a spacewalk ballet. 

American Time Capsule (1968)

 

AMERICAN TIME CAPSULE  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Chuck Workman

200 years of American history, from colonial times to Richard Nixon, compressed into just under three minutes. The images fly by, often faster than the mind can keep up with them, timed to a drumbeat soundtrack. Blink and you'll miss something, for sure. Don't blink, and you still won't catch it all.

Striptease 1996)

 

STRIPTEASE  (1996)  ¢ ¢

    D: Andrew Bergman

    Demi Moore, Burt Reynolds, Armand Assante,

    Ving Rhames, Robert Patrick, Rumer Willis

    Paul Guilfoyle, Frances Fisher, Pandora Peaks

A Florida stripper, locked in a draining custody battle with her scumbag ex-husband, catches the eye of a sleazy congressman who wants to get into her g-string. This is based on one of Carl Hiaasen's crazed, comic novels, but with most of the crazed, comic stuff inexplicably removed. What's left is a generic thriller doubling as a vanity project for Demi More, who strips down to a thong about every 20 minutes to show off her obsessively toned physique. If you watch it on a device that allows you to scene select, fast forward to the dance routines and with the time you save by skipping everything else, check out Hiaasen's book instead. 

Siren of the Tropics (1927)

 

SIREN OF THE TROPICS  (1927)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Henry Étiévant

    Josephine Baker, George Melchior, Pierre Batcheff,

    Régina Dalthy, Regina Thomas, Wladimir Kwanine

In her first feature film, Josephine Baker plays a native free spirit who, through the machinations of a melodramatic storyline, goes to Paris, where her dance moves make her the toast of the town. It's a mixed bag, with some period stereotyping that includes a comic chase on an ocean liner with Baker, first in blackface and then in whiteface, alarming her fellow (all-white) passengers. Some of Baker's dance numbers are recreated from her stage act, and if you've never seen Josephine Baker dance - wow!

Talk About a Stranger (1952)

TALK ABOUT A STRANGER  (1952)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: David Bradley

    Billy Gray, George Murphy, Nancy Davis, 

    Kurt Kasznar, Lewis Stone, Kathleen Freeman

Life lessons are learned when a young boy becomes convinced that a reclusive neighbor has poisoned his dog. Some of this plays like "To Kill a Mockingbird", if you just cut to the part about Boo Radley. I watched it with my colleague Ms. Applebaum, who thought the kid was out of control and needed to be locked up. That might sound harsh, but she has a point. 

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joel Coen

    Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell,

    Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Corey Hawkins,

    Harry Melling, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter

Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane and Macbeth goes on a murderous rampage, hoping to dodge a witch's curse. (It doesn't do any good.) Duncan gets it in the throat, Macduff's wife and kids are slaughtered, and Mrs. Macbeth can't seem to get rid of that damned spot. It's blood everywhere, really, in black and white, with spare sets, ominous music by Carter Burwell, and lots of mist and fog. Apart from Frances cracking up, the character you won't forget real soon is the witch played by Kathryn Hunter. You'll see why.

Burial of the Rats (1995)

 

BURIAL OF THE RATS  (1995)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Dan Golden

    Maria Ford, Adrienne Barbeau, Kevin Alber,

    Olga Kabo, Eduard Plaxin, Maya Menglet

Baroque softcore horror in which young Bram Stoker gets abducted by amazon rat women who dance topless and lounge around in thongs and bondage attire when they're not plotting ways to rid the world of men. Bram's prospects for survival don't look good, but then the dishiest of the rat women (Maria Ford) takes a liking to him, and the "Queen of Vermin" (Adrienne Barbeau) decides she can use his writing skills to document their activities and help them kill even more men. And there are rats, which the queen dispatches from time to time by playing a wooden flute, like a horror-movie pied piper. So I guess I'd say go ahead and watch this if you like looking at wicked women in revealing costumes, but not if you have a pathological aversion to rats. Filmed on location in Russia. The executive producer was Roger Corman.

Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

TARZAN AND HIS MATE  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Cedric Gibbons

    Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Neil Hamilton,

    Paul Cavanaugh, Forrester Harvey, Nathan Curry

Rival teams of ivory hunters set out in search of the legendary elephants' graveyard. There's a map, but only one man can get them there and back with the ivory: Tarzan.  MGM's followup to "Tarzan the Ape Man", in which Tarzan swings through the treetops, fights lions, outswims crocodiles, frolics with free-spirited wife Jane, and calls on the apes and elephants whenever he needs to raise an army on short notice. It's one of the movies that moved Hollywood to start enforcing the Production Code, provoked by O'Sullivan's revealing jungle costume and a long-censored underwater swimming scene in which Jane appears nude. (It's Olympic swimming champion Josephine McKim, not O'Sullivan, doing the actual swimming.) It's dated, silly, sexist, racist, culturally insensitive and tough on wild animals, and while it's not exactly an excuse, that's the way they made them back then. Call it a guilty pleasure. And a great Tarzan movie. 

Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)

 

TARZAN THE APE MAN  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: W. S. Van Dyke

    Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, 

    C. Aubrey Smith, Forrester Harvey, 

    Neil Hamilton, Doris Lloyd, Ray Corrigan

In his first outing as Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller swings through the trees, fights lions and crocodiles, makes the acquaintance of dishy Jane Parker and leads a couple of ivory hunters to the secret elephants' graveyard. Weissmuller had the physique of an Olympic athlete (he'd been one) and a feral quality that was tamed fairly quickly in the Tarzan adventures that followed. In this movie, he also has the advantage of not talking very much. (Delivering dialogue was not Weissmuller's most accomplished skill.) Period racism aside, this picture and "Tarzan and His Mate" are still the top of the line for Tarzan movies, thanks to Weissmuller's animal presence, O'Sullivan's saucy sense of fun, and a lot of leftover footage shot in Africa for "Trader Horn".

The Worst Person In the World (2021)

 

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD 

    D: Joachim Trier                     (2021)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielson Lie, Herbert Nordrum,

    Maria Grazia do Meo, Hans Olaf Brenner, Vidar Sandem

A woman who can't decide what she wants spends an entire movie not finding it. The woman's name is Julie, and the movie's divided into 12 chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The title of one of the chapters is "Julie's Narcissistic Circus", and that's the movie in a nutshell. Life's tough when everything's all about you. My favorite chapters were the one where Julie stops time and the one where she and some other people do mushrooms. Norway's official entry for the 2021 Academy Awards. 

Somewhere In the Night (1946)

SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT  (1946)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Joseph L.Mankiewicz

    John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan, 

    Richard Conte, Fritz Kortner, Margo Woods,

    Josephine Hutchinson, Lou Nova, Sheldon Leonard,

    Whit Bissell, Houseley Stevenson, Harry Morgan

A returning war vet with total amnesia goes to Los Angeles, hoping to piece together who he is, but afraid of what he'll find out. He's got an address (a hotel) and a name, George Taylor, that he's not sure is even his. And there's a note from a "pal" named Larry Cravat, who's left him $5,000 in a bank account. But who's Larry Cravat? A nice, twisty noir mystery with a protagonist who may or may not be a murderer, he just doesn't know. Whit Bissell plays a bartender, Harry Morgan plays a bathhouse attendant, Lloyd Nolan plays a loquacious homicide cop, and a rogues' gallery of less familiar faces round out the supporting cast. It's been suggested that downing a shot every time somebody in the movie says "Larry Cravat" might not be a good idea. 

Thief (1981)

 

THIEF  (1981)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Michael Mann

    James Caan, Tuesday Weld, James Belushi,

    Robert Prosky, Willie Nelson, Dennis Farina

James Caan plays a master safecracker who's making a decent living selling cars on the side and likes to work independently, but then a big-time gangster persuades him to hire on and James Caan figures he'll just do a couple of quick jobs and get out, but getting out turns out to be not so easy, and now the cops and the mob guys are after him and you figure it's only a matter of time before James Caan goes all Sonny Corleone on them and he does. Tuesday Weld plays James Caan's girlfriend. Robert Prosky plays the mob boss. Jim Belushi plays a safecracking accomplice. Chicago plays itself. The music's by Tangerine Dream. 

See How They Run (2022)

SEE HOW THEY RUN  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Tom George

    Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell, Adrien Brody,

    David Oyelowo, Reece Shearsmith, Ruth Wilson,

    Harris Dickinson, Pearl Chanda, Shirley Henderson

Whodunits. You see one, you've seen 'em all. At least that's the opinion of Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), an American director in London, hoping to shoot the screen version of "The Mousetrap", which has gone over 100 performances and (its producer thinks) can't go on much longer. What Leo doesn't know is that in this particular whodunit, he's the victim, the obnoxious character nobody likes, the one destined to be bumped off so the investigation can begin. The investigation is in the hands of Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan), and they'll get the job done, if only he can stay sober and she can avoid jumping to conclusions. It's a comic mystery in the tradition of "Knives Out" and "Murder By Death", playing off (and sometimes into) Agatha Christie's famously long-running play. One of the suspects is a stuffy, pompous Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson), and Ronan's a hoot as the eager, crime-solving apprentice, forever taking notes and tossing off puns, always just a hair out of sync with whatever's going on. She also does a crackup Katharine Hepburn impression.

Samson and Delilah (1949)

 

SAMSON AND DELILAH  (1949)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Cecil B. DeMille

    Hedy Lamar, Victor Mature, George Sanders,

    Henry Wilcoxon, Angela Lansbury, Olive Deering,

    Fay Holden, Russ Tamblyn, William Farnum,

    George Reeves, Julia Faye, Mike Mazurki

A legendary biblical strongman kills a lion with his bare hands, fights off an army with the jawbone of an ass, falls into the clutches of a Philistine wench, gets a haircut, loses his eyesight, powers a gristmill and finally brings down the house. If the Lord God Jehovah hadn't made all that stuff happen, Cecil B. DeMille would have. And did.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021)

THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING  

    D: Bianca Stigter              (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

For the duration of this 69-minute documentary, you're really just looking at three minutes of film. The footage was shot by an American tourist in 1938 in the Polish town of Nasielsk and it shows members of the town's Jewish community, men, women, kids, all ages, crowding the street. Some of the kids mug for the camera. Some of the grownups shoo them away. In the decades that followed, the footage miraculously survived. Most of those people did not. Under the Nazis, the Jewish population of Nasielsk was wiped out. Like Peter Jackson's World War One documentary, "They Shall Not Grow Old", or some of the movies of Bill Morrison, this one captures a moment, and by speeding the film up, slowing it down, reversing it, or zeroing in till all definition disappears, it effectively freezes time. It's also a detective story, a search made 70 years later to try to identify some of those faces. Most of them would be murdered during the Holocaust, and yet here they are, staring into the lens, still breathing, still laughing, in the only fragment that exists of their long-lost lives. Ghosts.

The Hit List: Richard Burton

"I've done the most awful rubbish in order to have 

  somewhere to go in the morning." 

  Richard Burton

    The first time I saw Richard Burton in a movie was probably when I watched "Demetrius and the Gladiators" on television in 1961. He's actually not in that one, except for a brief flashback clip of the scene at the end of "The Robe", where the mad emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson) sends Burton and fellow martyr Jean Simmons off to be executed. 

    The first time I saw Burton on a big screen was in "The Longest Day", Darryl Zanuck's epic recreation of D-Day, in which he plays a downed aviator whose wounds have been stitched together with safety pins. 

    After that, he seemed to turn up a lot, sometimes in good movies, sometimes in great ones, and sometimes in junk where the main point of interest is wondering how much the actor was drinking during the shoot. Here are a few of the better ones:

"The Robe" (1953/Henry Koster)

Burton's a Roman soldier who ends up with the robe Christ wore to the Crucifixion. The first movie in CinemaScope.

"The Longest Day" (1962/Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki)

Burton's sardonic fatalism stands out in a movie loaded with star cameos. 

"Becket" (1964/Peter Glenville)

Burton and Peter O'Toole face off as Thomas à Becket and Henry II.

"The Night of the Iguana" (1964/John Huston)

Burton's a defrocked priest on the skids in Mexico, in the company of Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon and Deborah Kerr.

"The Spy Who Came In From the Cold" (1965/Martin Ritt)

Cold War cloak-and-dagger work, from a novel by John le Carré. The anti-james Bond.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966/Mike Nichols)

"The Taming of the Shrew" (1967/Franco Zefirelli)

Mr. & Mrs. Burton in an Edward Albee psychodrama and a Shakespeare comedy. 

"Where Eagles Dare" (1968/Brian G. Hutton)

Burton, Clint Eastwood and a million rounds of ammo. A great guilty pleasure. 

"Anne of the Thousand Days" (1969/Charles Jarrott)

Genevieve Bujold plays Anne Boleyn. Burton plays Henry VIII.

"Villain" (1971/Michael Tuchner)

Burton plays a vicious gangster in a movie Guy Ritchie must've watched once or twice.

"1984" (1984/Michael Radford)

Burton persuades John Hurt to love Big Brother.

    As a young stage actor, Burton's intensity and charisma, along with a magnificent voice, earned him comparisons to Gielgud and Olivier. On screen, he didn't always bother to scale it back, but he could be devastating when he did. 

    He was famously married to Elizabeth Taylor (twice), and for a time was probably known as much for that and an extravagant lifestyle as he was for his film and theater work. 

    The years and a lifelong affection for alcohol caught up with him eventually, and in some of his later films, he looks ravaged. Yet even then, his haunted presence makes you want to watch. And he has that voice. 

    Burton died from a cerebral hemorrhage on August 5, 1984. He was 58.

Walk On the Wild Side (1962)

 

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE  (1962)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edward Dmytryk

    Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda,

    Barbara Stanwyck, Anne Baxter, Joanna Moore,

    Richard Rust, Donald Barry, John Anderson 

Not Lou Reed's "Walk On the Wild Side", but a steamy melodrama starring Laurence Harvey as a drifter who tracks an old girlfriend to New Orleans, where she's working nights in a brothel run by Barbara Stanwyck. Capucine plays the girl he's trying to find. Jane Fonda plays a floozy he meets on the road, and wouldn't you know it, she ends up with a job at the brothel, too. The pot boils over and Elmer Bernstein's jazz score is incessant. Anne Baxter, as the down-to-earth owner of a roadside cafe, gives the movie's least hysterical performance. 

Woman Times Seven (1967)

WOMAN TIMES SEVEN  (1967)  ¢ ¢

    D: Vittorio De Sica

    Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, Alan Arkin,

    Peter Sellers, Lex Barker, Rossano Brazzi,

    Anita Ekberg, Robert Morley, Vittorio Gassman,

    Elsa Martinelli, Patrick Wymark, Philippe Noiret

Shirley MacLaine plays seven different women in seven different stories, all set in Paris. In one, she's a widow in a funeral procession. In another, she's an angry housewife who falls in with some prostitutes. In a third, she's a diplomatic translator who likes to recite poetry in the nude. Shirley looks good in all of them, but the stories don't amount to much. The last episode is the best. Michael Caine costars in that one and doesn't say a word. 

WUSA (1970)

 

WUSA  (1970)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Stuart Rosenberg

    Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Perkins,

    Laurence Harvey, Pat Hingle, Cloris Leachman,

    Moses Gunn, Bruce Cabot, Don Gordon,

    Wayne Rogers, Leigh French, Michael Anderson Jr.

Three lost souls turn up in New Orleans, where a right-wing radio station is blasting hate to the masses. Robert Stone wrote the screenplay from his novel "A Hall of Mirrors", and it's a cynical, despairing journey into America's heart of darkness, eerily predating and anticipating both Fox News and Donald Trump. There's not much in it to cheer you up, and the picture was not a commercial success. Moral ambivalence doesn't always translate well to the screen, and that's kind of what Stone does. Robert Altman would take a more whimsical approach to similar material in "Nashville" in 1975.

Three Cheers For the Girls (1943)

THREE CHEERS FOR THE GIRLS  (1943)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jean Negulesco

A compilation of clips from Warner Bros musicals, with the spotlight on the chorus girls whose bare legs, smiling closeups and eye-catching costumes made those outlandish production numbers so much fun to watch. What would Busby Berkeley have done without them?

Mutiny In Outer Space (1965)

 

MUTINY IN OUTER SPACE  (1965)  ¢

    D: Hugo Grimaldi

    William Leslie, Dolores Faith, Pamela Curran,

    Richard Garland, James Dobson, Harold Lloyd Jr.

A deadly fungus from ice caves on the moon invades an orbiting space station whose commander has been away from Earth too long. Ho-hum sci-fi with a low-key performance by the not-very-scary-looking fungus. Produced by the Woolner Brothers (there were three of them), and if you're thinking, oh, you mean like the Warner Brothers? - well, no, not quite. 

Ray Meets Helen (2017)

 

RAY MEETS HELEN  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alan Rudolph

    Keith Carradine, Sondra Locke, Samantha Mathis,

    Keith David, Jennifer Tilly, Joshua Caleb Johnson

Two lonely, screwed-up people meet and hit it off, just as they both come into some unexpected money. It's another bit of cinematic sleight-of-hand from Alan Rudolph, his first movie in 15 years, and a nice vehicle for Keith Carradine and Sondra Locke. It was Locke's last screen role - she died six months after the film's release - and she has a sort of dreamy remoteness that fits her character, and Rudolph's dreamscape universe, perfectly. For the rest, it's an Alan Rudolph movie starring Keith Carradine - the sixth picture the two of them have worked on together. If you're a fan of either or both, that'll be enough.

Running Scared (2006)

 

RUNNING SCARED  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Wayne Kramer

    Paul Walker, Vera Farmiga, Cameron Bright,

    Chazz Palminteri, Karen Roden, Alex Neuberger,

    Elizabeth Mitchell, Bruce Altman, David Warshofsky

At its most basic, this is a movie about some gangsters trying to track down a stolen gun. Beyond that, it's a twisted, down-and-dirty thrill ride in which every incident and encounter uncovers a whole new level of perversity. Paul Walker and Vera Farmiga are the protagonists, along with a moon-faced kid named Cameron Bright, who has an interesting way of watching events unfold while holding the key to the story, and sometimes the gun. You know how with some movies, you can just leave them running while you go out to the kitchen for a beer? You don't want to do that with this one. If you do, you'll be missing something. 

A Rainy Day In New York (2019)

 

A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK  (2019)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Woody Allen

    Timothée Chalomet, Elle Fanning, Liev Schreiber, 

    Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Rebecca Hall,

    Cherry Jones, Kelly Rohrbach, Suki Waterhouse

This almost plays like a parody of a Woody Allen movie, the catch being that it is a Woody Allen movie, made by the man himself. Elle Fanning plays a novice reporter (remember Scarlett Johansson in "Scoop"?), in New York City to interview an arthouse filmmaker for her college newspaper upstate. Tagging along is her pal Gatsby (Timothée Chalomet), an idly wealthy kid who's drifting along on a sea of family money that he augments by winning at poker. It's a rainy day in New York and they get separated, and she ends up in encounters with three (count 'em - three) older men, while he runs into a few old friends, connects with the sister of an ex-girlfriend, and picks up a prostitute, which leads to a revealing conversation with his mother, played by Cherry Jones. So, okay, it's a movie set in New York, filled with articulate, self-important intellectuals who live in the kinds of places that in a real Manhattan would cost way more than most real people could ever afford. It's beautifully designed and shot, smartly cast and acted, and every now and then a line lands and you think, yeah, that could only be Woody Allen. The story's episodic and a bit thin, though, the outlook on romance is cynical, and Fanning's character seems a little too dull and bland for all the attention she gets from those guys. (Or maybe intellectual depth is not what they're looking for.) Johansson had more sharp edges in her Woody Allen movies, or seemed to. It made all the difference. 

The Quake (2018)

 

THE QUAKE  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: John Andreas Andersen

    Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Edith Haagenrud-Sande,

    Kathrine Thornborg Johansen, Jonas Hoff Oftebro

The same geologist who predicted the tsunami in "The Wave" in 2015 starts to believe that a massive earthquake is about to wreak havoc in Oslo. With three years of high-grade PTSD under his belt, do you think anybody will listen to him this time? Don't bet on it. Another crazed but exciting disaster thriller from Norway, with Kristoffer Joner as the beleaguered scientist, a walking head case who can't seem to escape the wrath of nature. I'm thinking that wherever this guy goes next, you'll probably want to be somewhere else.

Sacred Flesh (2000)

 

SACRED FLESH  (2000)  ¢ ¢

    D: Nigel Wingrove

    Sally Tremaine, Simon Hill, Kristina Bill,

    Moyna Cope, Eileen Daly, Moses Rockman,

    Emily Booth, Daisy Weston Michelle Thorne

A debate between Mary Magdalene and a tormented bride 

of Christ frames a series of erotic episodes in which a conventful of nuns succumb to their basest carnal desires. Mary Magdalene wins the debate on points and has a fondness for alliteration. The sisters are conspicuously stacked. 

Out of Print (2014)

 

OUT OF PRINT  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Julia Marchese

For most of this documentary, you're listening to a bunch of filmmakers and movie geeks talk about how much they love the New Beverly, a landmark repertory cinema in Los Angeles. The rest is an argument for film preservation, specifically a pitch to the industry powers that be to maintain their libraries of 35mm prints and keep them in circulation. That might be a lost cause in the digital age, but it's a worthwhile one, and it's got some passionate advocates. There are a few movie houses scattered around that are still doing what the New Beverly does, and if you happen to live near one, you're lucky. Joe Dante, Kevin Smith, Edgar Wright, Seth Green and Clu Gulager (who had his own personal seat at the New Beverly) are among the witnesses.

The Power of the Dog (2021)

 

THE POWER OF THE DOG  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jane Campion

    Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons,

    Kodi Smit-McPhee, Genevieve Lemon, Alice Englert,

    Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy, Alison Bruce

"There Will Be Blood" meets "Brokeback Mountain" in a western set in Montana but shot in New Zealand with a British actor playing an American cowboy in the lead. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil Burbank, a mean, foul-smelling sociopath who abuses everybody around him, but especially his brother George (Jesse Plemons), George's wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and Rose's effete son Pete (Kodi  Smit-McPhee). You can tell from the start there's something fucked-up about Phil. How fucked-up and why is something that becomes more apparent through the course of the film. It's ferociously acted by Cumberbatch, who shows you not just Phil's seething rage and cruelty, but the fear that's concealed somewhere behind his eyes. Phil is a swaggering stereotype, tougher than tough, and the key to the story is his relationship with Pete, who's his stereotypical opposite. It starts with Phil the macho bully toying with Pete, who seems defenseless. By the end, the balance has shifted. In a game like this, you can't always tell who's got the upper hand, and it's not necessarily who you think. The ending's perverse.

Riot In Cell Block 11 (1954)

 

RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Don Siegel

    Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Leo Gordon,

    Frank Faylen, Robert Osterloh, Paul Frees,

    Dabbs Greer, William Schallert, Whit Bissell

Straight-ahead storytelling with no side trips or diversions, about a revolt over living conditions in a maximum-security prison. Quentin Tarantino thinks it's the best prison movie ever, which might be stretching it, but you can see what he's getting at. Shot on location at Folsom Prison, and directed with brutal efficiency by Don Siegel, whose personal assistant on the picture, working on his first movie ever, was Sam Peckinpah.

Ryna (2005)

 

RYNA  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Roxandra Zenide

    Dorothea Petre, Valentin Popescu, Matthieu Rozé,

    Nicolai Praida, Theodor Delciu, George Custura 

A coming-of-age character study from Romania, about a 16-year-old girl named Ryna, who works as a mechanic in her father's garage. Ryna wears coveralls most of the time and keeps her hair cut short, on orders from her old man, who wanted her to be a boy. But there's no hiding the fact that Ryna's no boy, and the men in the village are starting to take notice. Ryna's aware of it, too, and wouldn't mind looking pretty and putting on a dress once in a while. Played with understated sympathy by Dorothea Petre, Ryna is resilient, free-spirited and instinctively smart, stuck in a limiting, rigidly controlled existence she longs to break out of. In the end, she does get away. Something bad happens, and she has to. It's hard to say where her life will go from there, but you hope it's someplace more welcoming, or at least less restrictive, than the one she's leaving behind. 

Screen Test / Take 19

 

Name the actors who played the following pairs of historical figures. For bonus points, name the movies they played them in.

              1. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ambrose Bierce

              2. Jimmy Hoffa and Eugene O'Neill

              3. Margaret Thatcher and Karen Silkwood

              4. J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes

              5. Richard Nixon and Pablo Picasso

              6. Princess Diana and Joan Jett

              7. Caligula and H.G. Wells

              8. Bob Dylan and Katharine Hepburn

              9. Sid Vicious and Lee Harvey Oswald

            10. Dashiell Hammett and Chuck Yeager

                                     ANSWERS:

 1. Gregory Peck in "Beloved Infidel" and "Old Gringo"

 2. Jack Nicholson in "Hoffa" and "Reds"

 3. Meryl Streep in "The Iron Lady" and "Silkwood"

 4. Leonardo DiCaprio in "J. Edgar" and "The Aviator"

 5. Anthony Hopkins in "Nixon" and "Surviving Picasso"

 6. Kristen Stewart in "Spencer" and "The Runaways"

 7. Malcolm McDowell in "Caligula" and "Time After Time"

 8. Cate Blanchett in "I'm Not There" and "The Aviator"

 9. Gary Oldman in "Sid and Nancy" and "JFK"

10. Sam Shepard in "Dash and Lilly" and "The Right Stuff"