Halloween (1978)

HALLOWEEN  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Carpenter

    Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, P. J. Soles

On Halloween in 1963, a six-year-old boy stabs his sister to death with a butcher knife. Exactly 15 years later, he escapes from the loony bin and comes back for more. A perfect little bare-bones horror movie that pretty much wrote the formula for an unending cycle of inferior sequels and imitations. You can find lots of cracks and holes in it if you're looking for them, but you can find those things in a nightmare, too, and this is some nightmare. You do believe in the bogeyman, don't you?

Dr. No (1962)

DR. NO  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Terence Young

    Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman,

    Jack Lord, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell

The first big-screen adaptation of an Ian Fleming/James Bond novel, in which a lean, young Sean Connery jets off to Jamaica to take on a power-mad scientist played by Joseph Wiseman. Ursula Andress turns up in a famous white bikini, just to keep things interesting. When this movie was made, JFK was in the White House, Banks and Mays and Aaron were hitting home runs, Jamaican music meant calypso, not reggae, and the Beatles were an obscure rock & roll band playing clubs around Hamburg and Liverpool. Jeez, was it that long ago?

Joseph Wiseman

(1918-2009)

Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)

COFFEE AND CIGARETTES  (2004)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jim Jarmusch

    Roberto Benigni, Bill Murray, Steven Wright,

    Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits,

    Jack White, Meg White, Cate Blanchett,

    GZA, RZA, Steve Coogan, Alfred Molina

Eleven blackout sketches, all revolving around conversations over coffee (or tea) and cigarettes. Blanchett stands out in a dual role as a movie star and her jealous cousin, and Murray does a funny bit as a waiter with an insane coffee habit and a bad smoker's cough. The best segments deal with role-playing and manipulation: the funny, cruel, self-defining ways people sometimes fuck with each other when they're just hanging out talking, each conversation becoming a kind of negotiation over the shifting balance of power. Sometimes they're fun. Sometimes they sting. If you're scanning the DVD looking for a highlight, try Murray's out-take and the episode with Tom Waits and Iggy Pop. 

Princess Nicotine (1909)

PRINCESS NICOTINE  (1909)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: J. Stuart Blackton

    Paul Panzer, Gladys Hulette

A man seated next to a table lights up and smokes away, while a tiny figure at his elbow plays with matches and dances in and around a cigar box. An early visual-effects piece, complete with stop-motion animation and a camera trick, done with a mirror, that allows the normal-sized man and the six-inch-tall fairy to appear together in the same frame. Pretty impressive for 1909. (5 minutes)

Shoot-'Em-Up (2007)

SHOOT-'EM-UP  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Michael Davis

    Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, Paul Giamatti

What the title says, with Clive Owen as a guy who's equally lethal with a knife, a wisecrack, a carrot, or a gun. Homage to John Woo and Bugs Bunny. A guilty pleasure.

Star Trek (2009)

STAR TREK  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: J.J. Abrams

    Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy,

    Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban,

    Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho,

    Anton Yelchin, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder

The cherished sci-fi franchise reboots itself by going back to before it all began, with the birth of Captain Kirk. Skip ahead 20-odd years, and the cocky young Kirk (Chris Pine) is being recruited  away from bar fights and into Star Fleet Academy, while Spock (Zachary Quinto) struggles to find some psychological balance between a Vulcan's remorseless logic and the empathy he inherited from his human mother. There's a plot that involves time travel and multiple versions of history and multiple Spocks - the solemn young officer played by Quinto, and the grizzled old guy played by you-know-who. Younger incarnations of the other regulars turn up, too, their defining characteristics either evolving or already in place. Bones bitches and grumbles a lot, Sulu puts his fencing skills to good use, Uhura can decipher Romulan in three dialects (while blithely fending off the horndog Kirk), Chekov mangles his v's and w's, and Scotty, played by scene-stealer Simon Pegg, stands by in the engine room to give 'er all she's got. The action almost never lets up, and yet there's an emotional resonance to the characters and their relationships, especially between Spock and Uhura, that wasn't there before. The guys who wrote this got it right. By the end, the whole gang is in position on the bridge, ready to boldly go where no one has gone before. More voyages of the Starship Enterprise should be expected.

Boys Town (1938)

BOYS TOWN  (1938)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Norman Taurog

    Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney,

    Henry Hull, Gene Reynolds

Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) fights to build a home for delinquent boys. It ain't easy. Classic Americana, a signature studio product from MGM's golden age. Mickey Rooney chews up everything but the floorboards, while Tracy coasts to his second straight Academy Award.

Il Divo (2008)

IL DIVO  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Paolo Sorrentino

    Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto,

    Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci

Portrait of a real-life "Godfather," Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, who served seven terms as the country's prime minister in the '70s, '80s and '90s. As played by Toni Servillo, Andreotti does not look particularly formidable. Stiff, formal, impassive and categorically untelegenic, you wonder how he'd be elected to anything. But as an operator in the maze of Italian politics, he has no equal, knowing exactly when to grease a palm, call in a favor, make a veiled threat, or worse. He shrugs off his phenomenal success by claiming it's "the will of God," as if that could explain his uncanny ability to cling to power and stay out of prison, while his enemies, by "the will of God," end up dead. You'd need a degree in postwar Italian history to identify all the characters, or to make a stab at what's true here and what isn't. But if the movie's got it even half right, this guy could give Vito Corleone a run for his money. At 90, Andreotti's still serving in the Italian Senate, where he has a lifetime appointment. By "the will of God," of course.

Randy Rides Alone (1934)

RANDY RIDES ALONE  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Harry Fraser

    John Wayne, Alberta Vaughn,

    George Hayes, Yakima Canutt

An investigator with a six-gun and a ten-gallon hat infiltrates a gang of outlaws in their secret hideout behind a raging waterfall. Early Duke, one of about 100 B westerns Wayne cranked out during the 1930s, before John Ford and "Stagecoach" made him an A-list star. With a running time of 53 minutes, it moves pretty fast. (To help speed things along, the horses always stay saddled and the cowboys sleep with their boots on.)

Swordfish (2001)

SWORDFISH  (2001)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Dominic Sena

    John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry,

    Don Cheadle, Sam Shepard, Vinnie Jones

It's hard not to like how this movie starts out. A master criminal and self-styled film critic (John Travolta in tight close-up) declares that most Hollywood movies are shit. He zeroes in on "Dog Day Afternoon", complaining that it lacked a happy ending because the robbers didn't get away, and arguing that things would've worked out better for Al Pacino if he'd actually killed a few hostages. When the soliloquy is finished, the camera pans back and you realize that Travolta's character is in a "Dog Day Afternoon" situation himself. That's the best part of "Swordfish", that opening bit. The rest isn't Hollywood shit exactly, but it's a long way from"Dog Day Afternoon": a cool-looking, mean-spirited action thriller about some crooks trying to hack their way to $9 billion in government money. It's the kind of picture where a hostage, wired from head to toe with high explosives, has to be detonated, not because it's essential to the story, or to evoke any sympathy for the victim, but to revel in the special effects mayhem caused by the blast. There's a merry ruthlessness in Travolta's cold-eyed villain, and Sena has a lot of fun playing with light and color. But the movie never lives up to the promise of that opening scene, and Berry has little to do except look good, modeling a variety of form-fitting outfits, or modeling topless without them.

Prix de Beauté (1930)

PRIX DE BEAUTE  (1930)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Augusto Genina

    Louise Brooks, Jean Bradin,

    Georges Charlia, Gaston Jacquet

In her last starring role, Louise Brooks plays a French typist who enters a beauty contest and wins, incurring the wrath of her jealous fiancé. This would be a pretty good soap opera even without its enigmatic star - it's extremely well photographed - but Brooks makes it more. Trained in the revolutionary techniques of modern dance, Brooks was the first really modern movie actress. She looks as if she stepped off some city street straight onto the screen, and poses so naturally that the posing itself is practically invisible. Watching most other great film stars perform, you can sense them working at it. The illusion is an act of will. Brooks doesn't seem to be acting at all. The film's conclusion, in which her husband tracks her down and kills her in a screening room while her cinematic image flickers in the background, is eerie, not only as the climax to the story, but as a distorted reflection of Brooks' own life. After wrapping the picture in Paris, she went back to Hollywood, but never got another decent role. She worked sporadically for a few more years, in bit parts and B westerns, but as a significant force in movies, her career was over. She was 23.

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)

THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE  (1959) 

    D: Edward L. Cahn                                                     ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Eduard Franz, Valerie French, Henry Daniell

In 1959, this would've appeared at the bottom end of a double feature at the local drive-in. A year or two later, it would've turned up late at night on local television. In fact, it did. It's a faintly amusing creep show about an old family curse and some shrunken heads. Henry Daniell, looking mummified, plays the archeologist who knows how to shrink the heads. 

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢    

    D: Quentin Tarantino

    Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz,

    Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger

Quentin Tarantino throws away the history book and reimagines World War Two as a crazed wish-fulfillment fantasy, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you know and how you feel about World War Two history. The story plays out on two tracks that eventually intersect. In a riff on "The Dirty Dozen", Brad Pitt and a team of cutthroat Jewish commandos roam the French countryside in advance of the Normandy Invasion, killing and scalping anybody they find in a German uniform. And in Paris, a Jewish theater owner and her black projectionist are planning a special surprise for the Nazi high command at the gala premiere of Goebbels' latest masterpiece. It opens with the title "Once upon a time . . ." and there's a storybook (or maybe comic book) quality to Tarantino's approach. It might be the kind of thing that could only come from somebody whose knowledge of war comes from movies and not war itself. But it's undeniably the work of somebody with a mad passion for film and an instinct for how to use it. Some of the best scenes are simply long conversations, suspenseful cat-and-mouse sessions, most of them featuring Christoph Waltz, who sets a whole new standard for civilized, scene-stealing villainy. The incendiary climax in the cinema, with the Führer in attendance, references Hitchcock, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and (no accident) the 1930 French movie "Prix de Beauté". It's breathtaking - a bloody, cathartic valentine from a reigning master to anybody who hates Nazis or just loves what movies can do.