Gold of the Amazon Women (1979)

 

GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN  (1979)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Mark L. Lester

    Bo Svenson, Anita Ekberg, Donald Pleasance,

    Richard Romanus, Robert Minor, Maggie Jean Smith,

    Bond Gideon, Susan Miller, Sarita Butterfield

A square-jawed explorer played by Bo Svenson goes into the jungle looking for the Seven Cities of Gold, but an evil drug lord played by Donald Pleasance wants the gold for himself, and (of course) there's a tribe of Amazons. A sluggishly paced, low-cost adventure made in Trinidad for NBC television. Nothing to write home about, or to go into the jungle for, either. Anita Ekberg, defining the concept of statuesque, plays the queen of the Amazons. 

The 2025 Covie Awards

The Covie Awards are as bogus as climate change is real. They were created during the pandemic to recognize cinematic achievement in an ever-shifting variety of categories. If there were actual awards to hand out, and anybody cared who they got handed out to, the Movie Buzzard would recognize the following:

Picture: "Eddington" (2025)

Actress: Fernanda Torres in "I'm Still Here" (2024)

Actor: Jesse Plemmons in "Begonia" (2025)

Supporting Actress: Shirley Henderson in "I Really Hate My Job" (2007)

Supporting Actor: Bob Burrus in "Tully" (2003)

Cameo: Hugh Grant in "Glass Onion" (2022)

Ensemble: "Paris" (2008)

Couple: Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in "American Ultra" (2015)

Juvenile Performance: Giulia Salerno in "Misunderstood" (2014)

Revival: "Dogma" (1999)

Foreign Language Film: "Nouvelle Vague" (2025)

Documentary: "The American Revolution" (2025)

Short Film: "Return To Glennascaul" (1952)

Director: Ryan Coogler, "Sinners" (2025)

Cinematography: David Chambille, "Nouvelle Vague" (2025)

Musical Score: Mica Levy, "The Zone of Interest" (2024)

Production Design: "Frankenstein" (2025)

Best Villain: Juliette Lewis in "The Thicket" (2024)

Best Mad Scene: Sally Hawkins in "Bring Her Back" (2025)

Better With Age: Jenny Agutter in "Sometimes Always Never" (2018)

Final Bow: Jane Birkin in "Jane By Charlotte" (2021)

Title Sequence: "American Ultra" (2015)

Poster Art: "The Astounding She-Monster" (1957)

Sound: "Overlord" (1975)

Why Closeups Were Invented: Tilda Swinton in "The Room Next Door" (2024)

Best Performance By an Actress Playing Herself: Robin Wright in "The Congress" (2013)

Best Performance By an Actress With a Shaved Head: Emma Stone in "Bugonia" (2025)

Best Charlton Heston Performance By an Actor Who's Not Charlton Heston: Barry Sullivan in "Planet of the Vampires" (1965)

Chewing the Scenery: Charles Laughton in "Devil and the Deep" (1932)

Maynard G. Krebs Award For Beatnik Slang: The cats at the club in "The Love Statue" (1965)

Most Eye-Catching Nude Scene: Julianne Nicholson in "Flannel Pajamas" (2006)

Most Discreet Nude Scene: Claudette Colbert in "Four Frightened People" (1934)

Least Inhibited Nude Couple: Raquel Karro and Rodrigo Bolzan in "Pendular" (2017)

How To Stuff a Wild Bikini: "Raquel Welch in "Fathom" (1967)

Most Evil Juvenile Performance: Earl Rhodes in "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea" (1976)

American Tobacco Institute Award For Achievement In Smoking: Adrien Brody in "The Brutalist"(2024)

Speed Racing: "Grand Prix" (1966)

Gender Bent: "Jacky In the Kingdom of Women" (2014)

Dead Birds and Time Loops: "Triangle" (2009)

Stuck: Zeb Haradon and Robin Ballard in "Elevator Movie" (2004)

Missing a Few Teeth: Chris Cooper in "Adaptation" (2002)

Lying Down On the Job: Sandra Bernhard in "The Third Date" (2003)

Over the Top and Around the Bend: Amy Madigan in "Weapons" (2025)

Still Crazy After All These Years: Bill Lee in "Spaceman" (2006)

Best Movie To Watch Stoned (Maybe): "Else" (2024)

Hundreds of Pies: "The Battle of the Century" (1927)

There Goes Chicago: "A House of Dynamite" (2025)

All Thumbs: Uma Thurman in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (1993)

Best Pole-Dancing: Olivia Graves in "Hundreds of Beavers" (2022)

Wickedest Lipstick: Jessica Chastain in "Salomé" (2013)

Best Name For an Actress In a Low-Budget Nudie Flick: Tiffany Tickles in "I Was a Teenage Strangler" (1997)

Weirdest Nicolas Cage Movie: "Color Out of Space" (2019)

Mind the Age Gap: Joan Crawford and Ty Hardin in "Berserk" (1967)

Shoot the Dog: "What Just Happened" (2008)

Herman Scobie Award For Career Achievement: 

John Waters

The Godfather Part II

THE GODFATHER PART II  (1974  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Francis Ford Coppola 

    Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall,

    Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Talia Shire,

    Lee Strasberg, G.D. Spradlin, Bruno Kirby

Continuing the saga of the Corleone family, from Don Vito's origin story in the first part of the 20th century to Michael's ruthless reign in the middle of it. If the original "Godfather" was a model of efficiency and restraint, this is the opposite of that. It's more ambitious and wide-ranging, but it goes on too long, and the soap-opera element, which was tightly controlled before, spills over. The stuff with Robert De Niro playing the young Vito is compelling, but when Michael (Al Pacino) and Kay (Diane Keaton) get into a screaming match over the fate of their marriage and their dead infant son, it starts to feel unhinged. The movie won an Oscar for best picture, and there are those who consider it to be better than the first film, but . . . it's not.

Evelyn Prentice (1934)

 

EVELYN PRENTICE  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: William K. Howard

    William Powell, Myrna Loy, Una Merkel,

    Isabel Jewell, Rosalind Russell, Harvey Stephens,

    Edward Brophy, Frank Conroy, Cora Sue Collins

When a blackmailing cad is murdered, a high-end att0rney takes up the defense of the woman accused of killing him, not knowing that his own wife could be the one who pulled the trigger. A smartly played crime drama with an implausible courtroom conclusion. Loy and Powell's followup to "The Thin Man", and Rosalind Russel's first film. 

A Complete Unknown (2024)

 

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: James Mangold

    Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning,

    Monica Barbaro, Scott McNary, Boyd Holbrook

Bob Dylan, the early years, tracking the life and career of the shape-shifting trubadour from his arrival in New York City in 1961 to his electrified performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Timothée Chalamet plays the evasive, elusive Dylan, tousled hair, shades, cigarettes and all, and he's good. So is Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. Both do their own singing, along with Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. The week after I saw the movie, I was at a party where somebody suggested that you can't really appreciate Dylan if you're not at least in your 70s, and there might be something to that. For anybody who was around and remembers the period, the film will have an extra edge. At the same time, the art direction perfectly captures the era - check out the old Studebakers - recreating a time that seems like prehistory now, when, starting out at least, nobody knew who Bob Dylan was, and nobody cared. 

Chasers (1994)

CHASERS  (1994)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Dennis Hopper 

    Tom Berenger, William McNamara, Erika Eleniak,

    Crispin Glover, Gary Busey, Dean Stockwell,

    Seymour Cassell, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper

A broadly played but deadly dull comedy about a couple of Navy shore patrolmen assigned to escort a prisoner to the brig. The hitch is that the prisoner in question is a woman played by Playboy model Erika Eleniak. It's like "The Last Detail" played for laughs, or it would be, if there were any.

Backtrack (1990)

 

BACKTRACK  (1990)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Dennis Hopper

    Dennis Hopper, Jodie Foster, Vincent Price,

    Joe Pesci, Dean Stockwell, John Turturro,

    Fred Ward, Catherine Keener, Charlie Sheen,

    Helena Kallianiotes, Julie Adams, Bob Dylan

An oddball gangster romance starring Dennis Hopper as a hit man and Jodie Foster as an artist who's witnessed a gangland murder. He's supposed to kill her, but she turns out to be more than he bargained for, and the two of them end up on the run together, trying to elude both the mob and the law. When Dennis gets stressed, he blows a few notes on a phallic saxophone, while Jodie, choosing life over death, tags along, not sure if she's being kidnapped or what's going on. Joe Pesci, Dean Stockwell and John Turturro play the gangsters trying to track them down. (Check out Turturro's shoes.) Vincent Price plays the godfather. Catherine Keener checks in for a minute or two as a truck driver on her way to Canada, and Bob Dylan has an uncredited cameo as a chainsaw artist. It's all pretty crazy, and that seems to be the point: Dennis Hopper with his demons (apparently) under control and his tongue buried deep in his cheek.