Citizen Ruth (1996)

CITIZEN RUTH  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Alexander Payne

    Laura Dern, Swoozie Kurtz, Mary Kay Place,

    Kurtwood Smith, Kelly Preston, M.C. Galney,

    Kenneth Mars, David Graf, Burt Reynolds

Laura Dern gives a fierce performance as Ruth Stoops, a chronically strung-out waste case who's already had four kids and finds out she's pregnant. About to be sentenced to jail for endangering the fetus through drug abuse - she'll huff anything she thinks will get her high - she becomes the focal point in a tug-of-war between an anti-abortion outfit called the Baby Savers and a pro-choice group. The Baby Savers claim to be all about love, except, of course, when anybody disagrees with them. The pro-choice folks are just as dogmatic, and conspicuously lacking in anything resembling a sense of humor. Ruth, who has a long history of making really bad decisions, doesn't see much hope either way. She'd rather be getting drunk or sniffing airplane glue. There's a bombs-away bluntness to a lot of this, and it'd be funnier if it didn't feel so true, but Ruth isn't a character you'll quickly forget. Like Paul Giamatti's forlorn schoolteacher in Payne's "The Holdovers", she makes a getaway at the end, and you'd like to think she'll move on to something better, even though you know the odds are against it. 

 

Bad Times At the El Royale (2018)

 

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Drew Goddard

    Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson,

    Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Lewis Pullman,

    Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Shea Whigham

A handful of strangers check into a curiously empty hotel that literally straddles the Nevada/California state line. They've all got stories, but are any of them who they say they are, and will anybody live long enough to check out in the morning? That last question could go either way in a crooked, new-noir nightmare that, like the hotel of the title, doesn't really exist anywhere except in its own dreamworld universe. You can't tell what will happen there, ever, except that it'll be nothing you expect. "What is this? Some sort of pervert hotel?" a character asks, and it is, but that's just a side effect. The El Royale is really about its guests. The bugs and concealed cameras and two-way mirrors aren't the half of it. 

The Burning Sea (2021)

THE BURNING SEA  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Andreas Anderson 

    Kristine Kujath Thorp, Henrik Bjelland, Bjorn Floberg,

    Rolf Kristian Larsen, Anders Baasmo, Nils Elias Olsen,

    Anneke von der Lippe, Ane Skumsvoll, Christoffer Staib

A pulse-pounding eco-thriller from Norway, about a massive oil-rig disaster in the North Sea. More evidence that the Norwegians know how to do this stuff as well as anybody. The storytelling's efficient, the effects look good, and the human element never gets lost. Some of the same people who worked on "The Quake" and "The Wave" were responsible for this. 

Love and Science (1912)

 

LOVE AND SCIENCE  (1912)  ¢ ¢

    D: M.J. Roche

    Èmile Dehelly, Renée Sylvaire

An inventor has a falling out with his fiancée 

while trying to set up what looks like the world's 

first Zoom call. Cinematography saves the day. 

St. Ives (1976)

 

ST. IVES  (1976)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: J. Lee Thompson

    Charles Bronson, Jacqueline Bisset, John Houseman,

    Maximilian Schell, Harry Guardino, Harris Yulin,

    Dana Elcar, Michael Lerner, Elisha Cook Jr.,

    Daniel J. Travanti, Robert Englund, Jeff Goldblum

Charles Bronson plays a crime-reporter-turned-would-be-novelist whose book's not going anywhere, so he takes a job as go-between in a payoff involving some stolen journals. It gets way more complicated than that - the narrative lost me completely after an hour or so - but by then you kind of want to stick around just to find out what the hell is going on. The Los Angeles locations look appropriately gritty, and Bronson, as usual, is bulletproof.

Harris Yulin

(1937-2025)

Carry On Don't Lose Your Head (1967)

 

CARRY ON DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD  (1967)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Gerald Thomas

    Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey,

    Joan Sims, Jim Dale, Peter Butterworth, Dany Robin

In late 18th-century France, the mob is screaming for blood, heads are rolling off the guillotine, and a rogue agent called the Black Fingernail is giving the revolutionary authorities a lot of trouble. Frantically paced silliness, with the Carry On Gang cutting up all over the place. True to form, the characters have names like Citizen Bidet, Citizen Camembert, the Duc de Pommefrit and Sir Rodney Effing (with two "f"s). Also, Sid James with a lisp. That's Carry On.

Central Airport (1933)

 

CENTRAL AIRPORT  (1933)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Wellman

    Richard Barthelmess, Sally Ellers, Tom Brown,

    James Murray, Grant Mitchell, Claire McDowell

Pre-code melodrama about two brothers, both flyboys and both in love with the same girl. You won't lose any sleep over who she ends up with, but the plot's just an excuse to get the planes in the air. Director William Wellman, the World War One aviator who made "Wings", knows what to do after that.