Gideon's Daughter (2005)

 

GIDEON'S DAUGHTER  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Stephen Poliakov

    Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Emily Blunt,

    Robert Lindsay, David Westhead, Tom Hardy,

    Ronni Ancona, Samantha Whittaker, Joanna Page

Bill Nighy plays a public relations guru estranged from his college-bound daughter. Miranda Richardson plays a convenience-store clerk whose son has died in a bicycle accident. They're an odd couple, but they hit it off in a low-key character study produced by the BBC. The death of Princess Diana and the lead-up to the new millennium provide historical context and subplots. Emily Blunt plays Nighy's daughter. 

Project Moon Base (1953)

 

PROJECT MOON BASE  (1953)  ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Talmadge

    Donna Martell, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, 

    Hayden Rorke, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison

Astronauts on a mission to take pictures in the lead-up to a moon landing are forced to land on the moon themselves when something goes wrong. Unexciting Cold War sci-fi with the accent on low-budget technology more than high-concept storytelling. (For a movie released more than 15 years before the actual event, the lunar landing vehicle looks a lot like the real thing.) Robert Heinlein wrote the script, and the sporty shorts and helmets the astronauts wear are cute. 

Battle Circus (1953)

 

BATTLE CIRCUS  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Brooks

    Humphrey Bogart, June Allyson, Keenan Wynn,

    Robert Keith, William Campbell, Philip Ahn,

    Patricia Tiernan, Adele Longmire, Steve Forrest

Major Humphrey Bogart and Lieutenant June Allyson find they're falling for each other while patching up the wounded in Korea. The love story's formulaic, but there's some tension in  the battle scenes. The makers of "M*A*S*H" took a few cues from this. 

Meteor (1979)

 

METEOR  (1979)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ronald Neame

    Sean Connery, Karl Malden, Natalie Wood,

    Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Joseph Campanella,

    Henry Fonda, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart

A space rock five miles wide is hurtling toward Earth at 30,000 miles an hour, and could cause a new ice age if it hits us. The Yanks and the Russkies have the weapons out there to save the planet, but only if they combine forces and sync their systems to blow the thing out of the sky. A '70s disaster thriller from American International, with the mandatory all-star cast and some cheesy-looking special effects. Favorite bad-movie bit: Toward the end, the main players and a couple dozen other rocket scientists are making their way through an old subway tunnel under the Hudson River when the walls give way the the river floods in. They emerge completely covered in mud, except for two hookers who look like they're just getting ready to go to work. Henry Fonda, who's not down there in the subway tunnel, plays "The President." 

Made In England (2024)

 

MADE IN ENGLAND  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: David Hinton

Martin Scorsese plays tour guide on a journey through the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who teamed up in the 1940s on a series of movies that combined a groundbreaking use of Technicolor with undercurrents of mysticism. Clips from "A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes", intercut with shots from "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull", show the direct influence the Powell & Pressburger films had on Scorsese, who first started watching them as a kid on a black-and-white TV. He's been watching them ever since. 

Telefon (1977)

 

TELEFON  (1977)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Don Siegel

    Charles Bronson, Lee Remick, Donald Pleasance

    Tyne Daly, Alan Badel, Patrick Magee, Sheree North,

    Frank Marth, Helen Page Camp, Iggie Wolfington

Passable pulp spy stuff with Charles Bronson as a Russian agent dispatched to the States to stop a rogue KBG official from starting World War Three. The credibility quotient is not high, but Don Siegel brings it off with his usual efficiency, and Tyne Daly steals a scene or two as a computer analyst with the CIA. Stirling Siliphant worked on the script. 

The Crime Is Mine (2023)

 

THE CRIME IS MINE  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: François Ozon

    Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert,

    Fabric Luchini, Dany Boon, André Dussollier

When a starving actress is accused of murder, her flatmate, an equally hungry lawyer, defends her in court. Which is just the beginning of this screwball comedy, a period social satire with a distinctly feminist edge. It can't quite sustain the pace it starts out with, but the actors pull you along. If you aren't completely fluent in French, be ready to read subtitles real fast.