Mr. Majestyk (1974)

 

MR. MAJESTYK  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Fleischer

    Charles Bronson, Linda Cristal. Al Lettieri,

    Paul Koslo, Lee Purcell, Alejandro Rey

Charles Bronson plays a melon grower and it's harvest time, but some bad people don't want him to bring in his crop. You'd think they'd know better. The last thing you want to do in a movie like this one is mess with Charles Bronson.

The Butcher Boy (1997)

THE BUTCHER BOY  (1997)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Neil Jordan

    Eamonn Owens, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Ian Hart,

    Sinéad O'Connor, Milo O'Shea, Brendan Gleeson

Against a backdrop of comic books and duck-and-cover, the Cuban Missile Crisis and "The Brain From Planet Arous", a troubled Irish kid with a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic dad goes around antagonizing everybody in town with an escalating campaign of cruel, antisocial behavior. A real dark comedy in which humans are constantly compared to pigs and a stocky young actor named Eamonn Owens plays the lead with such annoying conviction, you'd like to break a shovel over his head. Sinéad O'Connor's sardonic cameo as the Virgin Mary provides a glimmer of light, but the story's otherwise unrelieved pessimism could have you looking for an oven to put your head in by the time the picture's over.

Sinéad O'Connor

(1966-2023)

Lux Aeterna (2019)

 

LUX AETERNA  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gaspar Noé

    Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beatrice Dalle, Abbey Lee,

    Clara Deshayes, Félix Maritaud, Karl Glusman

This starts out with two actresses (Beatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, playing themselves) chatting about some of the crazy experiences they've had on film sets over the years. Beatrice does most of the talking - she just rattles on and on - and most of their dialogue feels improvised. Then they're called to the set to shoot a scene with Beatrice behind the camera, as the producer, and Charlotte in front of it, being burned at the stake. The set's in a state of organizational meltdown, a chaotic vision of filmmaking hell, and there are occasional title quotes from Jean-Luc Godard, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Rainer Werner Fassbender, and it ends with an extended strobe sequence that viewers susceptible to seizures SHOULD NOT be looking at. It comes in at around 50 minutes, and under the circumstances, maybe that's enough. What it adds up to is kind of up for grabs, with the strobe effect and end credits that identify everybody who worked on the picture by first name only, but maybe that makes sense, too, somehow. Anyway, once you've set Charlotte Gainsbourg on fire, what can you do for an encore?

The Oscar (1966)

 

THE OSCAR  (1966)  ¢

    D: Russell Rouse

    Stephen Boyd, Elke Sommer, Tony Bennett,

    Milton Berle, Eleanor Parker, Joseph Cotten, 

    Ernest Borgnine, Edie Adams, Jill St. John,

    Walter Brennan, Broderick Crawford, Ed Begley,

    Jean Hale, Jack Soo, Peter Lawford, 

    Bob Hope, Merle Oberon, Frank Sinatra, 

    James Dunn, Nancy Sinatra, Edith Head

Two hours of stupefying melodrama about a psychotic, slimeball movie star who steps all over everybody on his way to what he hopes will be an Academy Award. Stephen Boyd plays the lead  with a bizarrely accented performance that's way off the map, and Tony Bennett, in a rare dramatic appearance, shows why he was smart to stick with music as a primary career choice. As a tawdry monument to godawfulness, "The Oscar" could give "Showgirls" a run for its money. Try watching it on a couple of bong hits and see if that helps. 

Tony Bennett

(1926-2023)

Mandy (2018)

 

MANDY  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Panos Cosmatos

    Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache,

    Ned Dennehy, Olwen Fouéré, Richard Brake

An alcoholic logger played by Nicolas Cage and a spooky-eyed artist played by Andrea Riseborouogh are living in idyllic isolation out in the woods when she's abducted by a cult of Jesus freaks and something real bad happens and Nic decides to get even. Whatever you've seen Nicolas Cage do over the years, this movie's weirder than shit, like a nightmare in which anything that can be imagined can happen and you never know what that'll look like, except that Nicolas Cage will be covered in blood. Also, you probably don't want to rip his favorite shirt. Or miss the commercial for Goblin Cheese. 

The Man Who Sued God (2001)

THE MAN WHO SUED GOD  (2001)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Mark Joffe

    Billy Connolly, Judy Davis, Colin Friels,

    Wendy Hughes, John Howard, Emily Browning,

    Vincent Ball, Tim Robertson, Linal Haft

When a lightning strike destroys the boat he depends on to make a living, and the insurance company denies his claim, citing the "act of God" exemption, a lawyer-turned-fisherman steps back into the courtroom to sue the Almighty Himself. Viewers with an abiding affection for organized religion or the insurance industry might see it differently, but a lot of this is pretty funny. Connally's profanity-laced rants are hilarious, and Davis has a real knack for physical comedy. Q: When you're a church leader (or an insurance exec) faced with a lawsuit that could cost billions, and your only defense is to admit God doesn't exist, what do you do? Made in Australia.

Around a Small Mountain (2009)

 

AROUND A SMALL MOUNTAIN  (2009)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jacques Rivette

    Jane Birkin, Sergio Castellitto, André Marcon,

    Julie-Marie Parmentier, Tintin Orsini, Vimala Pons

A woman's car breaks down on the road, and a guy stops and gets it started for her without either of them speaking a word. They meet sometime later in town, where she's working as the ticket seller for a circus that plays to mostly empty seats. He comes to the show, and then starts hanging around the circus as it moves from place to place. The movie was written on the fly as it was being shot, and there's a sense that it doesn't quite know where it's going, but I guess if you don't know where you're going, you might as well go there with Jane Birkin. 

Jane Birkin

(1946-2023)

The Last of Sheila (1973)

 

THE LAST OF SHEILA  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Herbert Ross

    James Coburn, James Mason, Dyan Cannon,

    Richard Benjamin, Joan Hackett, Ian McShane,

    Raquel Welch, Yvonne Romaine, Pierre Rosso

A movie producer who suspects somebody murdered his dead wife invites six likely suspects to spend a week on his yacht, playing a game that could reveal the killer's identity. A whodunit with high-class surroundings, high-end booze, and a script by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim that's catty and clever and maybe a little too pleased with itself. The real mystery isn't who offed Sheila, but why Perkins isn't playing the Richard Benjamin role. 

The Last Wagon (1956)

 

THE LAST WAGON  (1956)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Delmer Daves

    Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Susan Kohner,

    Tommy Rettig, Stephanie Griffin, Ian McShane,

    Nick Adams, James Drury, Carl Benton Reid

Richard Widmark played his share of heroes over the years, and his share of murderers. In this movie, he plays a hero who's also a murderer, or maybe it's the other way around. He's Comanche Todd, a renegade white man who spent 20 years living with the Indians and saw his Indian family killed by four white guys, all of them brothers. As the story opens, three of the brothers are dead (he killed them), and the fourth, a sheriff, is chasing Widmark down and taking him in to be hanged. Then a wagon train comes along and some Apaches attack the wagon train and there are only six survivors, and who do you suppose has the skill set required to help them all escape through the perilous Canyon of Death? That'd be the guy in the filthy buckskins chained to the wagon wheel down there at the bottom of the cliff. You know. Richard Widmark. Hero. Murderer. Both.

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

JAWS: THE REVENGE  (1987)  ¢ ¢

    D: Joseph Sargent

    Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles,

    Michel Caine, Karen Young, Judith Barsi,

A great white shark turns up in the Bahamas, hoping to reconnect with the Brody family, and the "Jaws" franchise reaches a dead end. The script's a dud and the shark looks fake. Michael Caine, playing an airplane pilot with a gambling habit and love interest for widow Lorraine Gary, appears to be on cruise control. He can't save the movie, but he does make acting in junk look easy. 

C'était un Rendezvous (1976)

C'ETAIT UN RENDEZVOUS  (1976)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Claude Lelouch

A head-spinning, jaw-dropping, heart-pounding thrill ride, a nine-minute race at dawn through Paris, and for years a subject of mystery and speculation. To make it, Claude Lelouch mounted a camera on the front of a car, which somebody then drove way too fast through the City of Light. It was long thought that the car was a Ferrari with an unnamed Formula 1 driver behind the wheel. Long after he made the movie, Lelouch admitted that the car was really a Mercedes and he was the one driving it. However it was done, it's a lightning-fast tour of the city, shot in one continuous take with no digital effects or tinkering with the film speed: The car really is going that fast. The conclusion is perfect (and peculiarly French), and miraculously, nobody got killed along the way.

Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

 

HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND  (1960)  ¢ ¢

    D: Fritz Bötger

    Helga Franck, Helga Neuner, Harald Maresch,

    Alexander D'Arcy, Dorothee Parker, Rainer Brandt,

    Eva Schauland, Elfie Wagner, Barbara Valentin

The members of an American dance troupe wash up on a rock in the Pacific when their plane crashes on its way to Singapore, and find they're not alone: There are spiders on the island. Laughably bad exploitation horror from Germany (actually shot in Yugoslavia), the kind of movie for which a MST3K track would be redundant. The spiders have big dark eyes. The dancers have conspicuous curves. The filmmakers pay way more attention to the dancers than they do to the spiders. 

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

    Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell

    Alan Arkin, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin

A typical (dysfunctional) middle-class family hits the road, heading west out of Albuquerque in a reluctant Volkswagen bus. There's Dad (Greg Kinnear), a desperately upbeat self-help guru pitching his "nine-step program" to empty college classrooms. Teenaged son Dwayne (Paul Dano), who reads Nietzache all day and has taken a vow of silence until he's accepted to the Air Force Academy. Grandpa (Alan Arkin), a foul-mouthed lech with a fondness for heroin. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), a gay Proust scholar who's just survived a suicide attempt. Seven-year Olive (Abigail Breslin), whose chance to compete in a beauty pageant in Redondo Beach is the reason for the trip. And Mom (Toni Collette), whose resilience and resolve are the main thing holding the group together. You spend the first 20 or 30 minutes of this learning about the ways these people grate on each other. For the next hour, you get to know how their complex social dynamic works, and how much they depend on each other in the face of rejection, failure and plain old bad luck. Then a key family member leaves the scene, the movie shifts more into sitcom territory, and something gets lost. It's still pretty funny, though. The climactic beauty pageant, with little girls in swimsuits strutting and posing like underaged showgirls, capped by Breslin's bump-and-grind dance routine to the Rick James strip-joint standard "Super Freak", makes you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. Whether it qualifies as perverse social satire, or just horrifying bad taste, is up to you. 

Alan Arkin

(1934-2023)

Gothic (1986)

 

GOTHIC  (1986)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ken Russell

    Gabriel Byrne, Natasha Richardson Julian Sands,

    Timothy Spall, Myriam Cyr, Alec Mango,

    Andreas Wisniewski, Dexter Fletcher, Pascal King

On a famously dark and stormy night in 1816, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Percy's pal Mary and two others act out, dream, or hallucinate their most terrifying fantasies. It's 90 minutes of overwrought lunacy, reminiscent of Peter Brooks' "Marat/Sade", and like some other Ken Russell movies, it's both too much and not enough. The three key players - Lord Byron and the Shelleys - turn up in the introduction to James Whale's "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) in a segment that's a lot more concise, a lot less hysterical, and just s artistic as anything Russell does here. Plus, with that one, you get a Frankenstein movie.

Julian Sands

(1958-2023)