That Little Band of Gold (1915)

 

THAT LITTLE BAND OF GOLD  (1915)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle

    Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, 

    Ford Sterling, Alice Davenport, May Emory, 

    Minta Durfee, Charley Chase

Fatty and Mabel tie the knot, but can the marriage survive his philandering? Slapstick off the Keystone assembly line. Artistry trumped by speed.

The 2023 Covie Awards

 

    The Covie Awards were created three years ago to 

    recognize cinematic achievement in various categories 

    during the pandemic. Since then, the virus hasn't 

    entirely gone away, and it looks like the Covies, with 

    ever-evolving variants, will be sticking around, too.

Picture: "The Quiet Girl" (2022)

Director: Emerald Fennell, "Saltburn" (2023)

Actress: Emma Stone in "Poor Things" (2023)

Actor: Barry Keoghan in "Saltburn" (2023)

Supporting Actress: America Ferrera in "Barbie" (2023)

Supporting Actor: Dominic Sessa in "The Holdovers" (2023)

Cameo: Hanna Schygulla in "The Mystery of Henri Pick" (2019) and "Poor Things" (2023)

Ensemble: "That Championship Season" (1982)

Couple: Dale Dickey and Wes Studi in "A Love Song" (2022)

Juvenile Performance: Lola Campbell in "Scrapper" (2023)

Foreign Language Film: "Fallen Leaves" (2023)

Short Film: "Time Traveling Through Time" (2022)

Better With Age: Judy Davis in "Mystery Road" (2018)

Cinematography: Lloyd Ahern  II, "Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

Musical Score: Jeff Grace, "In a Valley of Violence" (2016)

Production Design: "Poor things" (2023)

Title Sequence: "The Lost King" (2023)

Best Title For an Exploitation Movie: "Schoolgirls In Chains" (1973)

Best Musical Performance: "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind" (2019)

Best Use of a Kinks Song: "LOLA" (2022)

Beat Mad Scene: Iwona Petry in "Szamanka" (1996)

Best Argument For Sequels: "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023)

Beat the Devil: "The Pope's Exorcist" (2023)

Top Hat & Tails: Mary Pickford in "Kiki" (1931)

Back To the Future: "A Time of Roses" (1969)

The World Turned Pink: "Barbie" (2023)

Gone With the Wind: "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

Wake of the Flood: "Noah's Ark" (1928)

Play Ball: "It Happens Every Spring" (1949)

Blood and Bikinis: "Slaughter Island" (2008)

Once Upon a Time In the West: "Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

Larger Than Life: Peter Dinklage in "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018)

Still Crazy After All These Years: Brent Spiner in "Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016)

End of the Line: "Neville Brand in "Evils of the Night" (1985)

Strangers In a Strange Land: Paula Luna and Elina Lowensohn in "After Blue" (20021)

The Eyes Have It: Paul Giamatti in "The Holdovers" (2023)

Drink Up: "Prohibition" (2011)

Bon Appetit: Divine in "Pink Flamingos" (1972)

The Bible On a Budget: "Sins of Jezebel" (1953)

Games People Play: "Cheap Thrills" (2014)

Earth Girls Are Uneasy: Gloria Talbot in "I Married a Monster From Outer Space" (1958)

She Sees Dead People: Shirley Henderson in "Life During Wartime" (2009)

If Only It Was Only a Dream: "Tag" (2015)

Just a Gigolo: William Powell in "Ladies' Man" (1931)

On the Road Again: Clint Eastwood in "Cry Macho" (2021)

Best Performance By a Somnambulist: Sondra Locke in "The Second Coming of Suzanne" (1974)

Grinning From Ear To Ear: Mia Goth in "Pearl" (2022)

Catching a Few Rays: "The Hideous Sun Demon" (1958)

Still Cracking the Whip: Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" (2023)

Building the Bomb: "Oppenheimer" (2023)

Dropping the Soap In the Shower: Anne Heche in "Girls In Prison" (1994)

That Witch Looks Familiar: Donald Sutherland in "The Castle of the Living Dead" (1964)

Dracula Dead and Loving It: Nicolas Cage in "Renfield" (2023)

The Devil Made Her Do It: Madison Stone in "Evil Toons" (1992)

Maynard G. Krebs Award For Beatnik Slang: Peter Brown in "Kitten With a Whip" (1964)

All In the Family: "Byleth: Demon of Incest" (1972)

Most Eye-Catching Nude Scene: Eva Green in "The Dreamers" (2003)

Most Discreet Nude Scene: Charlotte Gainsbourg in "My Dog Stupid" (2019)

Best Performance By an Actor Playing a Walrus: Justin Long in "Tusk" (2014)

Wickedest Lipstick: Jodie Foster in "The Mauritanian" (2021) and Scarlett Johansson in "Asteroid city" (2023)

Scariest Teeth: Morgana Ignis in "Moon Garden" (2022)

Most Depressing Nightclub Routine: "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976)

Monsters' Ball: "House of the Wolf Man" (2009)

Scream and Scream Again: Judee Morton in "The Slime People" (1963)

Golden Meat Cleaver Award For Gratuitous Carnage: "The Untold Story" (1993)

Best Animal Performance: The elephant in "Zenobia" (1939)

Weirdest Nicolas Cage Movie: "Prisoners of the Ghostland" (2021)

It Came From Beneath the Sea: "Godzilla Minus One" (2023)

Why Closeups Were Invented: Sally Hawkins in "The Lost King" (2023) and Léa Seydoux in "France" (2021)

Playin' In the Band: "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir" (2014)

Doin' the Vatican Rag: Jude Law in "The Young Pope" (2016)

Beyond the Green Door: Marilyn Chambers in "Angel of H.E.A.T" (1982)

Herman Scobie Award For Career Achievement: Peter Coyote

Tentacles (1977)

 

TENTACLES  (1977)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Oliver Hellman (Ovidio Assonitis)

    John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins,

    Claude Akins, Henry Fonda, Cesare Danova

"Jaws" with a giant octopus instead of a shark. "Tentacles", get it?

Shadow In the Cloud (2020)

 

SHADOW IN THE CLOUD  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Roseanne Liang

    Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale,

    Taylor John Smith, Callan Mulvey, Benedict Wall

This starts out with a clip from an instructional cartoon about gremlins on an airplane, and goes on to be . . . a live-action movie about gremlins on an airplane. It stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a World War Two aviator who boards a B-17 just before takeoff, carrying a highly classified package that she insists is top priority. The crew - all men - give her shit and confine her to the gun turret under the fuselage, which turns out to be a good thing when they're attacked by a Japanese fighter and she shoots it down. Eventually you find out what's in the package and the movie loses its tenuous grip on anything resembling reality. If the story's not based on a comic book, it should be. Moretz makes an appealing action-figure heroine. 

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum (1966)

 

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY 

TO THE FORUM  (1966)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Richard Lester

    Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton,

    Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Annette Andre,

    Leon Greene, Roy Kinnear, Peter Butterworth, Alfie Bass

A frantically paced musical farce based on a hit Broadway play based on a comedy by Plautus, about slaves and slave girls, senators and soldiers, virgins and courtesans, all chasing each other around ancient Rome. Farce almost always works better on the stage, where the split-second timing it requires can't be faked. Lester keeps everything moving real fast, but speed alone isn't enough, and gags that might've had a theater audience roaring can seem too broad on the screen, even in something as raucous as this. (The only key player who doesn't overact is Buster Keaton.) Filmed in Spain, on sets left over from "The Fall of the Roman Empire".

Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978)

 

WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN?  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Karel Reisz

    Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty,

    Anthony Zerbe, Richard Masur, Ray Sharkey,

    Charles Haid, Gail Strickland, David Opatoshu

Three desperate characters, two of them rank amateurs, get in over their heads when they try to move two kilos of uncut heroin. This can't go well for anybody, and guess what? It doesn't. Robert Stone cowrote the script from his novel "Dog Soldiers", a morally shifty reflection on the American psyche in the last years of the Vietnam War. Viewers who are up on their counterculture history can watch for the references to Ken Kesey and Neal Cassady. The ending echoes "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".

The 10 Best Movies of 2023

 

The following list was scraped together from the movies I saw last year, either for the first time ever, or for the first time in years. Some I managed to see on a big screen. Others were on Kanopy, YouTube, or TCM. Some were rentals from Scarecrow, Seattle's only remaining video store.

MOVIES I LIKED A LOT:

"The Quiet Girl" (2022)

"Poor Things" (2023)

"LOLA" (2022)

"Scrapper" (2023)

Saltburn" (2023)

"Oppenheimer" (2023)

"Killers of the Flower Moon" (2023)

"Fallen Leaves" (2o23)

"Pearl" (2022)

"Dead For a Dollar" (2022)

SECRET TREASURES:

"Tag" (2015)

"Breaking Surface" (2020)

"Moon Garden" (2022)

"The Ballad of Lefty Brown" (2017)

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Renfield" (2023)

"The Pope's Exorcist" (2023)

"Loaded Weapon 1" (1993)

"Lobster Man From Mars" (1989)

MOVIES I MIGHT WATCH AGAIN SOMETIME:

"A Love Song" (2o22)

"Full Time" (2021)

"In a Valley of Violence" (2016)

"The Holdovers" (2023)

"Godzilla Minus One" (2023)

"Asteroid City" (2023)

"Tár" (2022)

"Mystery Road" (2018)

"Living" (2022)

"The Lost King" (2022)

FOUR FROM THE VAULT:

"Blast of Silence" (1961)

"The Last Picture Show" (1971)

"Pink Flamingos"(1972)

"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

TOXIC WASTE:

"Wet Wilderness" (1975)

Belfast (2021)

 

BELFAST  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Kenneth Branagh

    Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe,

    Ciaran Hinds, Judi Dench, Colin Morgan

Like John Boorman's "Hope and Glory" (1987), Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast" is about a kid growing up in a war zone. In Boorman's movie, it was the London Blitz. In Branagh's, it's the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It all plays out in a working-class neighborhood where Catholics and Protestants have been walking the same streets for generations. When Protestant gangs take to those streets, aiming to drive out the Catholics or kill them, along with any Protestants who don't think that's a good idea, things get tense. But the folks who have lived there all their lives don't want to leave, and that includes Buddy, a kid who mostly just wants to play soccer and hang out with his beloved grandfather and maybe get better acquainted with a girl he has a crush on at school. It's shot in black and white in available light, which gives the whole film the same sort of documentary feel as the news footage that turns up on television. There are movie references - "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", "Nigh Noon", "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "One Million Years B.C." - and the soundtrack is practically wall-to-wall Van Morrison.The Belfast Branagh shows you is a scary place to be, but it's where these people live and always have, so what are you going to do? There's no easy answer, but Branagh's dedication at the end says a lot very simply: "For those who stayed. For those who left. For all those who were lost."

Berkeley Square (1933)

 

BERKELEY SQUARE  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Frank Lloyd

    Leslie Howard, Heather Angel, Valerie Taylor,

    Betty Lawford, Irene Browne, Colin Keith-Johnston

    Ferdinand Gottschalk, Alan Mowbray, Olaf Hytten

Leslie Howard travels back in time to 1784, and finds that a) he doesn't quite fit in, and b) knowing the future isn't necessarily an advantage. A fantasy romance with a melancholy edge. Howard got an Oscar nomination for his performance.

49th Parallel

 

49TH PARALLEL  (1941)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Michael Powell

    Leslie Howard, Eric Portman, Laurence Olivier,

    Raymond Massey, Anton Walbrook, Glynis Johns,

    Finlay Currie, Naill MacGinnis, Richard George

When Canadian bombers sink a German U-boat in Hudson Bay, the sub's survivors try to escape by traveling across Canada from east to west. A suspenseful, episodic propaganda piece in which the Germans (most of them) are hardcore Nazis, and the Canadians (all of them) are stout defenders of freedom and tolerance. In its most revealing segment, the sailors find shelter in a Hutterite settlement, a perfectly functioning socialist utopia. Ralph Vaughn Williams composed the music. Laurence Olivier's Quebecois accent is close to impenetrable. 

Glynis Johns

(1923-2024)

Shakespeare In Love (1998)

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE  (1998)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: John Madden

    Joseph Fiennes,  Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush,

    Ben Affleck, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson,

    Simon Callow, Colin Firth, Imelda Staunton

Faced with a monumental case of writer's block and a looming deadline to knock off a comedy called "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter", young Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) goes looking for a muse, and finds her in Gwyneth Paltrow. Before long, he's madly in love, and the play he's been working on has started to morph into a tragedy called, well, you know. A witty, romantic Elizabethan frolic with a script by Tom Stoppard ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"), who seems to know exactly how to access not just the Bard's language, but his funny bone. Even Shakespeare would be amused. 

Tom Wilkinson

(1948-2023)

Final Reel 2023

 

JOSS ACKLAND, 95, actor

“Villain” 

“The Black Windmill” 

“Lady Jane”

KENNETH ANGER, 96, writer, director, editor

“Scorpio Rising” 

“Hollywood Babylon” 

“Kustom Kar Kommandos”

ALAN ARKIN, 89, actor

“Catch-22” 

“Wait Until Dark” 

“The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”

BURT BACHARACH, 94, composer

“Lost Horizon” 

“Casino Royale” 

 “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”

JOHN BAILEY, 81, cinematographer

“Groundhog Day” 

“Silverado”

“In the Line of Fire”

JOHN BEASLEY, 79, actor

“The General’s Daughter” 

“Lost Souls”

“The Gift”

HARRY BELAFONTE, 96, actor

“Carmen Jones” 

“Island In the Sun” 

“The Angel Levine”

RICHARD BELZER, 78, actor

“The Groove Tube” 

“Night Shift” 

“The Puppet Masters”

TONY BENNETT, 96, singer, actor

“The Oscar” 

“Muppets Most Wanted” 

“Analyze This”

HELMUT BERGER, 78, actor

“The Damned” 

“The Romantic Englishwoman" 

 “Conversation Piece”

JANE BIRKIN, 76, actress

“Blow-Up” 

 “Around a Small Mountain” 

“Dust”

ROBERT BLAKE, 89, actor

“Lost Highway” 

“In Cold Blood” 

“Electra Glide In Blue”

BARBARA BOSSON, 83, actress

“The Last Starfighter” 

“Capricorn One” 

“The Education of Allison Tate”

ANDRE BRAUGHER, 61, actor

“Glory”

 “She Said”

 “Passengers”

JIM BROWN, 87, actor, fullback

“The Dirty Dozen”

“Slaughter”

“Ice Station Zebra”

RICOU BROWNING, 93, actor, writer, stunts

“Creature From the Black Lagoon”

 “Revenge of the Creature”

DICK BUTKUS, 80, actor, linebacker

“Deadly Games”

 “Johnny Dangerously”

 “Mother, Jugs & Speed”

BILL BUTLER, 101, cinematographer

“Jaws”

 “Grease”

 “The Conversation”

MARGIT CARSTENSEN, 83, actress

“Angry Harvest”

 “Sun Alley”

 “Satan’s Brew” 

JOSEPHINE CHAPLIN, 74, actress

 “Jack the Ripper”

 “Shadowman”

 “Escape To the Sun”

KATHY CHOW, 57, actress

“Beast Cops”

 “Nude Fear”

“Sleepless Town”

MARINA CICOGNA, 89, producer

“Medea”

 “Incontro”

 “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion”

MARLENE CLARK, 85, actress

“Switchblade Sisters”

 “Slaughter”

“Black Mamba”

ANGUS CLOUD, 25, actor

 “Freaky Tales”

“North Hollywood”

 “Your Lucky Day”

PHYLLIS COATES, 96, actress

“Girls In Prison”

 “Blood Arrow”

 “Panther Girl of the Kongo”

CAROLE COOK, 98, actress

“Summer Lovers”

 “American Gigolo”

 “Sixteen Candles”

PAT COOPER, 93, actor

 “Ankle Bracelet”

 “Code of Ethics”

 “Analyze That”

TERENCE DAVIES, 77, writer, director

“A Quiet Passion”

 “The Long Day Closes”

 “The House of Mirth”

CARL DAVIS, 86, composer

“The Rainbow”

“The French Lieutenant’s Woman”

“The Girl In a Swing” 

MARGIA DEAN, 101, actress

“Bandit Queen”

 “Fangs of the Wild”

 “7 Women From Hell”

KAMAR DE LOS REYES, 55, actor

“Salt”

“Love & Suicide”

 “Nixon”

MELINDA DILLON, 83, actress

“Absence of Malice”

 “Bound For Glory”

 “Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

TED DONALDSON, 89, actor

“My Dog Rusty”

“A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”

"The Redd Stallion"

JOAN EVANS 89, actress

“The Walking Target”

 “No Name On the Bullet”

 “Edge of Doom”

SHARON FARRELL, 82, actress

“Night of the Comet”

 “The Stunt Man”

 “Sweet Sixteen”

SHIRLEY ANNE FIELD, 87, actress

“Alfie”

 “Peeping Tom”

 “My Beautiful Laundrette”

FREDERIC FORREST, 86, actor

“The Rose”

 “Apocalypse Now”

 “One From the Heart”

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN, 87, director

“The French Connection”

“The Exorcist”

 “Sorcerer”

MICHAEL GAMBON, 82, actor

“Gosford Park”

 “Page Eight”

 “The King’s Speech”

LÉA GARCIA, 90, actress

“Black Orpheus”

 “Neighbors”

 “Golden Mouth”

CARLIN GLYNN, 83, actress

“Sixteen Candles”

 “Three Days of the Condor”

 “Gardens of Stone”

MARK GODDARD, 87, actor

“Roller Boogie”

 "Blue Sunshine”

“Lost In Space”

BO GOLDMAN, 90, writer

“Melvin and Howard”

 “Swing Shift” 

“Meet Joe Black”

LELIA GOLDONI, 86, actress

“Shadows”

“The Day of the Locust”

 “The Devil Inside” 

BERT I. GORDON, 100, director

 “The Spider”

 “Satan’s Princess”

 “Burned At the Stake”

SHECKY GREENE, 97, actor

"Splash"

"Tony Rome"

"History of the World: Part I"

LINDA HAYNES, 75, actress

“Rolling Thunder”

 “Brubaker”

“The Drowning Pool”

DODIE HEATH, 96, axtress

“Seconds”

 “The Fortune Cookie”

 “The Diary of Anne Frank”

HUGH HUDSON, 85, director

“Lost Angels”

 “Revolution”

 “Chariots of Fire” 

BARRY HUMPHRIES, 89, writer, actor

“Shock Treatment”

 “Bedazzled”

 “Side By Side”

GAYLE HUNNICUT, 80, actress

“The Legend of Hell House”

"Marlowe"

"The Wild Angels"

GLENDA JACKSON, 87, actress

“Women In Love”

 “A Touch of Class”

 “The Romantic Englishwoman”

RON CEPHAS JONES, 66, actor

“Titus”

“He Got Game”

 “Sweet and Lowdown”

SATISH KAUSHIK, 66, actor, director

“Country Mafia”

 “Bloody Brothers”

 “Out of Control”

VICTOR J. KEMPER, 96, cinematographer

“The Candidate”

 “Slap Shot”

 “Dog Day Afternoon”

PIPER LAURIE, 91, actress

“Carrie”

 “The Hustler”

“The Grass Harp” 

NORMAN LEAR, 101, producer

“The Princess Bride”

 “Cold Turkey”

 “The Night They Raided Minsky’s”

BILL LEE, 94, composer

“She’s Gotta Have It”

 “School Daze”

 “Do the Right Thing”

MICHAEL LERNER, 81, actor

“Barton Fink”

“The Candidate”

 “Eight Men Out” 

GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA, 95, actress

“Trapeze”

 “Solomon and Sheba”

 “Woman of Straw”

LISA LORING, 64, actress

“Blood Frenzy”

 “Savage Harbor”

 “Doctor Spine”

GEORGE MAHARIS, 94, actor

“Exodus”

 “Sylvia”

 “The Satan Bug”

MARK MARGOLIS, 83, actor

“Scarface”

 “The Thomas Crown Affair”

“Requiem For a Dream”

ANA OFELIA MARGUÍA, 90, actress

"Diplomatic Immunity"

"The Black Widow"

"The Last Call"

FRANCESCO MASELLI, 92, writer, director

“The Red Shadows”

 “Intolerance”

“A Fine Pair”

JULIETTE MAYNIEL, 87, actress

“Bluebeard”

 “Wise Guys”

 “Eyes Without a Face”

DIANE MCBAIN, 81, actress

“The Caretakers”

 “Parrish”

 “Claudelle Inglish”

JAMES MCCAFFREY, 65, actor

“Sordid Things”

 “Last Call”

“Broken English”

DAVID MCCALLUM, 90, actor

“Freud”

 “The Greatest Story Ever Told”

 “The Great Escape”

DARIUSH MEHRJUI, 83, writer, director

“The Tenants”

 “Ghosts”

 “The Cow”

MURRAY MELVIN, 90, actor

“A Taste of Honey”

 “The Fixer”

 “The Devils”

RUSSELL MERRITT, 81, writer, historian, archivist

“The Making of The Birth of a Nation”

 “D.W. Griffith: Father of Film”

WALTER MIRISCH, 101, producer

“The Pink Panther”

 “The Magnificent Seven”

 “West Side Story”

RICHARD MOLL, 80, actor

“Slay Belles”

 “Kids vs. Monsters”

 “Caveman”

NOREEN NASH, 99, actress

“The Southerner”

 “Adventures of Casanova”

 “The Devil On Wheels” 

BARRY NEWMAN, 92, actor

“Vanishing Point”

 “The Limey”

 “City On Fire”

PETER NERO, 89, composer

“Sunday In New York”

RICHARD NG, 83, actor

“Mr. Sunshine”

 “Mr. Zombie”

 “Mr. Vampire Part 3”

MICHAEL NUSSBAUM, 99, actor

“House of Games”

 “Fatal Attraction”

 “Field of Dreams”

SINÉAD O’CONNOR, 56, singer, actress

“Hush-a-Bye Baby”

 “The Butcher Boy”

 “Wuthering Heights”

RYAN O’NEAL, 82, actor

“Love Story”

 “Paper Moon”

 “Want’s Up, Doc?”

MARISA PAVAN, 101, actress

“John Paul Jones”

 “Solomon and Sheba”

 “The Rose Tattoo”

MATTHEW PERRY, 54, actor

“Almost Heroes”

 “Three To Tango”

“Fools Rush In”

GORDON PINSENT, 92, actor

“Blacula”

 “Colossus: The Forbin Project”

 “The Shipping News”

EDWARD R. PRESSMAN, 79, producer

“Badlands”

 “Sisters”

"Blue Steel"

TARAJA RAMSESS, 41, stunts

 “Black Panther”

 “The Suicide Squad”

 “Avengers: Infinity War”

LANCE REDDICK, 60, actor

“John Wick”

 “Great Expectations”

 “Oldboy”

PAUL REUBENS, 70, actor

“Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”

 “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

 “Blow”

NORMAN REYNOLDS, 89, production designer

“Raiders of the Lost Ark”

 “Mission: Impossible”

 “Sphere”

ROBBIE ROBERTSON, 80, composer, actor

“Carny”

 “Once Were Brothers”

 “The Last Waltz”

OWEN ROIZMAN, 86, cinematographer

 “The Exorcist” 

“Three Days of the Condor”

 “Wyatt Earp”

RICHARD ROUNDTREE, 81, actor

“Shaft”

 “City Heat”

 “Man Friday”

JACQUES ROZIER, 96, director

“Blue Jeans”

 “Paparazzi”

 “Maine Ocean”

RIUCHI SAKAMOTO, 71, composer

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”

 “The Last Emperor”

 “The Revenant”

EILEEN SAKI, 79, actress

“Meteor”

 “Splash”

 “History of the World: Part I”

JULIAN SANDS, 65, actor

 “Naked Lunch”

 “Impromptu”

“A Room With a View”

HERSCHEL SAVAGE, 70, actor

“3 Days In June”

 “My Wife’s a Tramp”

 “Dripping Wet”

HENRI SERRE, 92, actor

“Jules and Jim”

 “The Fire Within”

 “House of 1,000 Pleasures”

CARMEN SEVILLA, 92, actress

“King of Kings”

 “Cross of the Devil”

 “Babes In Bagdad”

ELLIOTT SILVERSTEIN, 96, director

“Cat Balloou”

 “The Happening”

“A Man Called Horse”

TOM SIZEMORE, 61, actor

“Natural Born Killers”

 “Saving Private Ryan”

 “Wyatt Earp”

TOM SMOTHERS, 86, musician, actor

“Silver Bears”

 “Serial”

“The Informant!”

SUZANNE SOMERS, 76, actress

“Serial Mom”

 “American Geaffiti”

 “Billy Jack Goes To Washington"

AILEEN SORKIN, 67, actress

“Oscar”

 “Ted & Venus”

"I Don't Buy Kisses Anymore"

FRANCES STERNHAGEN, 93, actress

“The Hospital”

 “Two People”

 “Outland”

STELLA STEVENS, 84, actress

“Nickelodeon”

 “Slaughter”

 “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”

RAY STEVENSON, 58, actor

“Thor”

“The Three Musketeers”

 “Jayne Mansfield’s Car”

BETTA ST. JOHN, 93, actress

“The Robe”

 “The Naked Dawn”

 “Corridors of Blood”

LEE SUN-KYUN, 48, actor

“Parasite”

 “Night and Day”

 “Sleep”

INGA SWENSON, 90, actress

“Advise & Consent”

 “The Miracle Worker”

 “Lipstick”

SYLVIA SYMS, 89, actress

“Teenage Bad Girl”

 “Expresso Bongo”

 “Amazons of Rome”

MIIKO TAKA, 97, actress

“Lost Horizon”

“Walk Don’t Run”

 “Paper Tiger”

TOPOL, 87, actor

“Cast a Giant Shadow”

 “For Your Eyes Only”

 “Fiddler On the Roof”

BRIAN TUFANO, 83, cinematographer

“Trainspotting”

 “Last Orders”

 “Billy Elliot”

LAWRENCE TURMAN, 96, producer

“The Graduate”

“The Drowning Pool”

 “The Thing”

TINA TURNER, 83, singer, actress

“Tommy”

 “Last Action Hero”

 “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”

RAQUEL WELCH, 82, actress

“Fantastic Voyage”

“Bedazzled”

"Lady In Cement"

PAXTON WHITEHEAD, 85, actor

“Back To School”

 “Kate & Leopold”

“Baby Boom”

TOM WILKINSON, 75, actor

“In the Bedroom”

 “The Full Monty”

“Shakespeare In Love”

CINDY WILLIAMS, 75, actress

“American Graffiti”

 “The Conversation”

 “The First Nudie Musical”

TREAT WILLIAMS, 71, actor

  “Hair”

 “1941”

 “Mulholland Falls”

OLIVER WOOD, 80, cinematographer

“Face/Off”

 “Mr. Holland’s Opus”

 “The Bourne Identity”

BURT YOUNG, 83, actor

“Rocky”

 “Chinatown”

 “Last Exit To Brooklyn” 

                   "If I'm too strong for some people, 
                     that's their problem."
                      Glenda Jackson

The Informant! (2009)

 

THE INFORMANT!  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Steven Soderbergh

    Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynskey,

    Patton Oswalt, Ann Dowd, Clancy Brown,

    Candy Clark, Tom Smothers, Dick Smothers

There's an old saying that it's always better to tell the truth, because lying leaves you with too much to remember. That's an escalating problem for the character Matt Damon plays in "The Informant!", a reverse-spin variation on "The Insider" , about a high-level corporate-player-turned FBI-mole with intimate knowledge of a worldwide price-fixing acheme. Going in, Mark Whitacre seems a lot like some of the other button-down types Damon has played - a straight-arrow middle-American with a family in the suburbs and a sense of right and wrong that compels him to act. But the longer the story plays out, and the more Whitacre talks - and talks and talks - the more something just seems fishy. It's a gradual process, and while it's hard to work up much sympathy for Whitacre, or anybody else in the film, the skill with which Damon and Soderbergh document his unraveling is masterful. And comical, from his pretentious voiceover narration to his increasingly ill-fitting toupee. Watch for a couple of famous late-'60s television stars in cameo roles.

Tom Smothers

1937-2023

Assassination Nation (2018)

 

ASSASSINATION NATION  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Sam Levinson

    Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Harry Nef, Abra,

    Colman Domingo, Danny Ramirez, Joel McHale,

    Maude Apatow, Bill Skarsgård, Cody Christian,

    Jeff Pope, Bella Thorpe, Stacie Davis, Cullen Moss

An in-your-face teen action movie that revolves around hacking and bullying and ends with four bitchy but heroic high-school girls forming a commando squad to battle the fascists who want to take over their town. Like Joe Dante's "Homecoming", it'a a genre piece with both a kick and a message, ending on a note of bleak hope and wishful thinking - that an army of gun-toting rednecks could be neutralized by an elite force of heavily armed adolescent girls. On the other hand, when you think about it, that does sound pretty scary.