Tornado! (1996)

 

TORNADO!  (1996)  ¢ ¢

    D: Noel Nosseck

    Bruce Campbell, Shannon Sturges, Ernie Hudson,

    L.Q. Jones, Bo Eason, Carrie Boren, Charles Homet

A TV movie released more or less simultaneously with "Twister", about a daring gang of storm chasers tearing around the Texas Panhandle, hoping to catch up with a big one. The vain, publicity-savvy bad guy's a TV weatherman, not a rival storm chaser, and there's even a nifty little invention that could help track tornadoes better, if the team can just set it down in the middle of one. In "Twister", the device was called "Dorothy". In  this movie, it's called "Patti". I guess that makes all the difference. Not surprisingly, the tornado effects aren't nearly as hair-raising or cool-looking as the ones Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton had to deal with. No flying cows in this one. 

Variety Girl (1947)

 

VARIETY GIRL  (1947)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Marshall

    Mary Hatcher, Olga San Juan, DeForest Kelley, 

    Frank Ferguson, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, 

    Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn,

    Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Veronica Lake,

    Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, Gail Russell,

    Burt Lancaster, William Bendix, Paulette Goddard,

    Barry Fitzgerald, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Preston,

    Pearl Bailey, Mona Freeman, William Demarest,

    Frank Faylen, Cecil Kellaway, Spike Jones

A sort of Hollywood home movie in which a girl turns up in the land of dreams hoping for an audition and lots of stars wander in and out, some of them on screen no more than a few seconds. Pearl Bailey's the highlight. Alan Ladd sings a duet with Dorothy Lamour, and he's not bad. Paulette Goddard takes a bubble bath. Hope and Crosby trade a few good-natured barbs and do a little soft-shoe dance routine. In a demonstration of erratic marksmanship, Burt Lancaster aims a gun at the cigarette in Lizabeth Scott's mouth and shoots her instead. William Bendix shoves a grapefruit in Olga San Juan's face. It's silly and inconsequential, but when the stakes are this low, it doesn't really matter very much.

Driving Madeleine (2022)

 

DRIVING MADELEINE  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Christian Carion

    Line Renaud, Dany Boon, Alice Isaaz,

    Jérémie Lahuerte, Gwendoline Hamon,

    Julie Delarme, Thomas Alden

Dr. Sporgersi,

I saw a good French movie yesterday called "Driving Madeleine", about a Paris cab driver who takes an old woman from her home to the assisted-living facility she's moving into. He ends up driving her all over the city, to places where key events in her life took place. It's very well done, with some dark stuff I didn't expect, and a fairy-tale ending that only works because after spending two hours in the car with these people, it's exactly what you want to see happen. You see a lot of Paris, too. That's my recommendation for today. If you see it sometime, let me know what you think. 

                                                                                                 Nick

The Lords of Salem (2012)

 

THE LORDS OF SALEM  (2012)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Rob Zombie

    Sheri Moon Zombie, Meg Foster, Bruce Davison,

    Jeff Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Patricia Quinn,

    Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, Maria Conchita Alonso,

    Andrew Prine, Sid Haig, Brynn Horrocks, Lisa Marie

A 17th-century witch's curse starts to manifest itself 300 years later, targeting a radio DJ in (where else?) Salem, Massachusetts. The movie starts out with a colonial coven dancing naked in the woods, and before you know it, the witches are all being burned to death. (Historical footnote: The real Salem witches were hanged, not burned, and probably weren't even witches.) So, anyway, it's all coming down on this radio girl with the dreads and the tattoos and the attitude and the retro-hippie wardrobe, but there's nothing very original or even all that interesting in the story. We've seen these witches before, or witches just like them, in other movies, but the movie's not bad to look at (Rob Zombie shot it without digital effects), and Meg Foster and Judy Geeson, checking in as two of the witches, are effectively unnerving.

Freud's Last Session (2023)

 

FREUD'S LAST SESSION  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Matt Brown

    Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries,

    Jodi Balfour, Orla Brady, Jeremy Northam

In September of 1939, Sigmund Freud, exiled from Vienna, entertains a guest in his London apartment - the Oxford professor and future author of "The Chronicles of Narnia", C.S. Lewis. Much of what follows is a philosophical debate between the prickly, combative atheist Freud, played by Anthony Hopkins, and the more defensive but no less emphatic Christian apologist Lewis, played by Matthew Goode. Other elements play into the discussion. Freud is dying of cancer, hooked on morphine and in pain. His daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) has become his primary caregiver, and his incessant demands are exhausting her. Germany has invaded Poland and the Blitz is about to begin, and Lewis has lingering PTSD from his time in the infantry during the Great War. It's a lively intellectual joust and a spirited workout for Hopkins and Goode. Sir Anthony overdoes it a little - when you're alone a quiet room with just one other person, you don't have to project that much - and Goode, like Lewis, more than holds his own. No matter what side of the argument you come down on, it might be worth your while to listen in.

A Trip To Mars (1918)

 

A TRIP TO MARS  (1918)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Holger-Madsen

    Gunnar Tolnaes, Zanny Petersen, Nicolai Neiiendam,

    Frederic Jacobsen, Alf Blütecher, Svend Kornbeck

Silent Danish sci-fi about a crew of daring adventurers who fly off to Mars, where white-robed pacifists live in blissful tranquility, subsisting on an all-fruit diet. That's a stark contrast to life on Earth, where World War One was still going on, but it seems a bit boring, just the same, like the old harps-and-angels vision  of heaven. The version I saw on YouTube was colorized and looked pretty good. 

The Caller

 

THE CALLER  (1987)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Arthur Alan Seidelman

    Malcolm McDowell, Madolyn Smith

A woman's cooking dinner by herself in a house out in the woods when a guy shows up at the door asking to use the phone because he's had car trouble out on the road. What follows is a two-person psychodrama that keeps you guessing to the end. The woman seems a little unstable, and the man could be a manifestation of that, or he could be the devil, it's hard to say. What's going on here, anyway? And what kind of game is this? Will the woman win on points, or will somebody end up dead? It's a mystery, but if you feel like giving it a shot, here's a tip: Never trust Malcolm McDowell.