Strongroom (1962)

 

STRONGROOM  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Vernon Sewell

    Derren Nesbitt, Colin Gordon, Ann Lynn,

    Keith Faulkner, William Morgan Sheppard

Three bank robbers pull off a heist and make their getaway, leaving two people - the bank's manager and his secretary - locked in the vault. They're home free, till they realize it's a holiday weekend, the vault is airtight, and by the time the bank opens on Tuesday morning, those two people will be dead. Not wanting to add murder to their rap sheet, they decide to break back into the bank before it's too late. Implausible, to be sure, but a nifty, little, low-budget thriller starring nobody you've ever heard of, except maybe Derren Nesbitt, who would later play the arrogant Gestapo officer in "Where Eagles Dare". The final closeup shot is both comical and - for the bank robbers - devastating.

Stranger On the Run (1967)

 

STRANGER ON THE RUN  (1967)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Don Siegel

    Henry Fonda, Anne Baxter, Michael Parks,

    Dan Duryea, Sal Mineo, Lloyd Bochner,

    Michael Burns, Tom Reese, Bernie Hamilton,

    Walter Burke, Madlyn Rhue, Zalman King

A bum played by Henry Fonda gets thrown out of a boxcar in a dusty western town, does a little work in exchange for a shot of whiskey, and starts looking for a woman nobody seems to want to talk about. When the woman turns up murdered, the bum becomes a suspect, on the run from some railroad vigilantes who want to hang him. Dan Duryea has a good late-career role as an old gunman who functions as the posse's conscience, but there's some uncertainty in the script, especially with the Michael Parks character, a lawman whose values and motives are never entirely clear. He mumbles a lot, too. The ending could've gone in two very different directions. See if you think the filmmakers chose the right one. Made for TV. 

The Teachers' Lounge (2023)

THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ilker Çatak

    Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Eva Löbau

    Rafael Stachowiak, Michael Klammer, Leonard Stettnisch,

    Can Rodenbostel, Vincent Stachowiak, Padmé Hamdemir,

    Elsa Krieger, Kathrin Wehlisch, Kersten Reimann

In a middle school somewhere in Germany, a theft has occurred, and compelling evidence suggests who's responsible. A first-year teacher gets caught up in the investigation, but the more she tries to do what's right, the more she's vilified by everybody else. A contender for the Oscar for best foreign feature - it lost to "The Zone of Interest" - with a strong central performance by Leonie Benesch as a compassionate idealist trapped in a claustrophobic nightmare in a movie that never leaves the school.

Fan Dance (1942)

FAN DANCE  (1942)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: [?]

Legendary stripper Sally Rand performs her most famous routine in a Soundies short. The effect is more elegant than revealing. Memorably recreated in Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff" (1983), with Peggy Davis twirling the fans. 

Megalopolis (2024)

 

MEGALOPOLIS  (2024)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Francis Ford Coppola 

    Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel,

    Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Talia Shire,

    Jason Schwartzman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney,

    Chloe Fineman, Balthazar Getty, Dustin Hoffman

Francis Ford Coppola's grandiose hallucination about fashion, architecture, politics, love, time, greed, arrogance, power and just about everything else is a monument to epic ambition and narrative incoherence. Five minutes in, I was hopelessly lost, and nothing happened in the next two hours to change that. My colleague Ms. Applebaum thought drugs might help. I'm not sure about that. 

Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

 

ZIEGFELD GIRL  (1941)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Z. Leonard

    James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr,

    Lana Turner, Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper, 

    Edward Everett Horton, Charles Winninger,

    Ian Hunter, Philip Dorn, Paul Kelly, Eve Arden,

    Dan Dailey, Felix Bressart, Fay Holden, Al Sheen

Three young women break into the Ziegfeld Follies. Romance and melodrama follow. Busby Berkeley staged the production numbers, but the pre-Code stuff he did back in the early '30s was more fun. Judy singing "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" is a highlight. The costumes are over-the-top. 

Raggedy Man (1981)

 

RAGGEDY MAN  (1981)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jack Fisk

    Sissy Spacek, Eric Roberts, Sam Shepard,

    William Sanderson, Tracey Walter, R.G. Armstrong,

    Henry Thomas, Carey Hollis Jr., Bill Thurman

There's a lot of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in this movie, which stars Sissy Spacek as a small-town telephone operator in World War Two Texas, stuck in a job she longs to escape and doing her best to raise two active young boys. There's a Boo Radley character, the scarred, mysterious "raggedy man," keeping a watchful eye on the woman and her kids and pushing a lawn mower around. There's a fleeting shot at romance with a sailor (Eric Roberts) that doesn't last long, and a threat in the form of two menacing cretins played by Tracey Walter and William Sanderson. Director Jack Fisk (Spacek's husband) has worked mostly as a production designer and knows how to make a period piece look good. Jerry Goldsmith composed the music, and if you remember Elmer Bernstein's score for "To Kill a Mockingbird", that'll feel just right, too.