It Pays To Advertise (1931)

 

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE  (1931)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Frank Tuttle

    Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, Eugene Pallette, 

    Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Lucien Littlefield,

    Judith Wood, Louise Brooks, Morgan Wallace

A laugh-free comedy about a couple of guys trying to scam their way to the top of the soap business. Louise Brooks, billed seventh, has a small role as a dancer, but you never 

see her dance and she quickly disappears.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Chad Stahelski 

    Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane,

    Ruby Rose, Common, Claudia Gerini, Lance Reddick

    Laurence Fishburne, Franco Nero, John Leguizamo

The Boogeyman is back, and the bullets are flying and the bodies are piling up, with two more chapters (at least) yet to go. Somebody calculated the number of people John Wick kills in this and came up with 128. That seems a little low. 

Kiki (1931)

KIKI  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Sam Taylor

    Mary Pickford, Reginald Denny, Margaret Livingston,

    Joseph Cawthorn, Phil Tead, Fred Walton, Edwin Maxwell

Pre-Code Pickford, with Mary as a French chorus girl in love with a producer played by Reginald Denny. Pickford was in her mid-30s by the time sound came in, too old for the little-girl characters that had made her the screen's first female superstar. She made a few talkies (this was her next-to-last), but her transition to more adult roles didn't click with audiences and she retired in 1933. Not surprisingly, the best stuff in "Kiki" is visual, most  notably a musical number choreographed by Busby Berkeley, with the star in tails and a top hat gradually losing her pants. Pickford could do that sort of thing as well as anybody, including Chaplin, but movies were evolving and moving on, and they were about to move on without Mary Pickford. 

It Happens Every Spring (1949)

IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING  (1949)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2 

    D: Lloyd Bacon

    Ray Milland, Jean Peters, Paul Douglas,

    Ed Begley, Ted de Corsia, Ray Collins,

    Jessie Royce Landis, Alan Hale Jr.

A chemistry professor (Ray Milland) creates a substance that prevents baseballs from coming in contact with bats, and soon finds himself in cleats and a uniform, pitching and winning in the major leagues. A pleasant, unpretentious baseball fantasy with nice work by Milland in a role that seems tailor-made for Jimmy Stewart. 

I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

 

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Meir Zarchi

    Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace,

    Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleemann 

A notorious exploitation piece in which a young woman played by Camille Keaton spends roughly half the movie being assaulted and the other half getting even. You can decide for yourself which half is more painful to watch. The rape sequences are brutal and degrading, a human being reduced to a quivering piece of meat. The revenge segments are kind of ridiculous, but there's lots of blood. Roger Ebert found the movie despicable. (He was as revolted by the audience he watched it with as he was by the picture itself.) Like it or hate it, it's a rough, uncompromising film, as hard to defend as it is to dismiss. 

Vaudeville (1997)

 

VAUDEVILLE  (1997)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    W: Greg Palmer

When I was a kid, there was a guy who used to show up on television from time to time called the Banana Man. The Banana Man would come out wearing a long, bulky overcoat and he'd pull stuff out of his overcoat - bananas, hundreds of them, but lots of other stuff, too. It was amazing what he could pull out of his overcoat. That was it. That was what he did. The Banana Man had been a novelty act in Vaudeville, and he turns up briefly in this American Masters documentary with more than a hundred other performers, some of them famous and a lot of them (these days) obscure. Starting in the 19th century, Vaudeville, with its comics, dancers, jugglers, musicians, plate-spinners, regurgitators, magicians, contortionists and acrobats, was massively popular at a time when live entertainment was the only entertainment there was. What killed it was technology, specifically radio and film. The irony, watching a movie like this, is that film is the sole reason most of these performances still exist, an art form preserved by the medium that brought it to an end. Immortality, of sorts, for the Banana Man.

Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist (2004)

 

JESUS CHRIST: SERIAL RAPIST  (2004)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Bill Zebub

    Alexandra Voskobnikov, Kerri Taylor, Debbie Dee,

    Yelena Sabel, Rocco Martone, Bill Zebub

Cheaply shot, dimly lit sexploitation in which women are tied up, tortured and killed to a death-metal soundtrack. Then, for a change of pace, the camera moves outside and the light gets better and some women are crucified. (The opening credits and the bonus features on the DVD reveal a singular preoccupation with crucified women.) I'm thinking "Bill Zebub" could be an alias, what about you? (For the record, Bill's other screen credits include "Dumb and Dahmer", "Sicko, the Bloodclown" and "Boogers of the Antichrist".) Some movies you watch just to see how bad a movie with a title like that could be. Then you find out.