Lake Michigan Monster (2018)

 

LAKE MICHIGAN MONSTER  (2018)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

    Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Beulah Peters,

    Erick West, Daniel Long, Wayne Tews

A crackpot comedy, shot cheaply (in Milwaukee and Muskegon), about a sea captain obsessed with hunting and killing a monster lurking offshore in Lake Michigan. It's the kind of thing the Marx Brothers and Monty Python excelled at, but pure zaniness can be hard to pull off. I watched it with a receptive crowd at Seattle's Grand Illusion, and beyond about the half-way point, the laughter really died away. (It loses something when the captain's "band of rowdy cutthroats" leave the scene and the captain takes over the story.) It's in black and white, and there are some imaginative, low-grade effects. 

His Majesty O'Keefe (1954)

 

HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Byron Haskin

    Burt Lancaster, Joan Rice, André Morell,

    Benson Fong, Abraham Sofaer, Archie Savage,

    Philip Ahn, Charles Horvath, Tessa Prendergast

Cast adrift by a mutinous crew, a dashing sea captain washes up on a tropical island and immediately sees that there's a fortune to be made in coconut oil. Now all he has to do is secure some financing, find a boat and a crew, and coax the islanders into harvesting their coconuts. A colorful South Seas adventure, more leisurely than Lancaster's other swashbucklers, but still a passable showcase for Burt's distinctive brand of derring-do. If the '20s had Douglas Fairbanks, and the '30s and '40s had Errol Flynn, the '50s most emphatically had Burt Lancaster. 

Bikini Bloodbath (2006)

 

BIKINI BLOODBATH  (2006)  ¢

    D: Jonathan Gorman, Thomas Edward Seymour

    Debbie Rochon, Leah Ford, Robert Cosgrove,

    Sheri Bomb, Katie Gil, Anna-Karin Eskilsson,

    Natasha Nielsen, Olja Hrustic, Russ Russo,

    Dana Fay Ensalata, Margaret Rose Champagne

An empty-headed slasher flick about a bunch of bikini girls being stalked and chopped up by a killer wielding a meat cleaver and wearing a chef's hat. This movie tests the notion that there's any limit at all to how dumb 72 minutes of video footage can be. References to "Citizen Kane" and "Dazed and Confused" notwithstanding, the evidence suggests that there's not. 

The Accountant (2016)

 

THE ACCOUNTANT  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gavin O'Connor

    Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons,

    Jon Bernthal, Jean Smart, Cynthia Addai-Robinson,

    Jeffrey Tambor, Allison Wright, John Lithgow

A good, tricky thriller in which Ben Affleck plays a guy on the spectrum with two extraordinary skills: crunching numbers and killing people. That has  made him a lot of money, but his sense of perfection and obsession with leaving no mission incomplete have consequences. Ben and Anna Kendrick are the stars, but the standouts are J.K. Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson as the federal agents working the case. A sequel was released in 2025.

Gideon's Daughter (2005)

 

GIDEON'S DAUGHTER  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Stephen Poliakov

    Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Emily Blunt,

    Robert Lindsay, David Westhead, Tom Hardy,

    Ronni Ancona, Samantha Whittaker, Joanna Page

Bill Nighy plays a public relations guru estranged from his college-bound daughter. Miranda Richardson plays a convenience-store clerk whose son has died in a bicycle accident. They're an odd couple, but they hit it off in a low-key character study produced by the BBC. The death of Princess Diana and the lead-up to the new millennium provide historical context and subplots. Emily Blunt plays Nighy's daughter. 

Project Moon Base (1953)

 

PROJECT MOON BASE  (1953)  ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Talmadge

    Donna Martell, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, 

    Hayden Rorke, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison

Astronauts on a mission to take pictures in the lead-up to a moon landing are forced to land on the moon themselves when something goes wrong. Unexciting Cold War sci-fi with the accent on low-budget technology more than high-concept storytelling. (For a movie released more than 15 years before the actual event, the lunar landing vehicle looks a lot like the real thing.) Robert Heinlein wrote the script, and the sporty shorts and helmets the astronauts wear are cute. 

Battle Circus (1953)

 

BATTLE CIRCUS  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Brooks

    Humphrey Bogart, June Allyson, Keenan Wynn,

    Robert Keith, William Campbell, Philip Ahn,

    Patricia Tiernan, Adele Longmire, Steve Forrest

Major Humphrey Bogart and Lieutenant June Allyson find they're falling for each other while patching up the wounded in Korea. The love story's formulaic, but there's some tension in  the battle scenes. The makers of "M*A*S*H" took a few cues from this.