The Idle Class (1921)

THE IDLE CLASS  (1921)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Charles Chaplin 

    Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Mak Swain,

    Henry Bergman, Al Ernest Garcia, Lita Grey

Chaplin plays two roles: the Little Tramp and a wealthy alcoholic married to Edna Purviance. In the first half, the Tramp plays a round of golf without ever sinking a putt. In the second half, there's a gala masquerade where the rich guy gets stuck in a suit of armor and Edna mistakes the Tramp for her husband. Chaplin had a distracting habit now and then of looking directly into the camera, and you see him do that a few times here. Whether he's gazing at the lens, the audience, himself, or all three together, is hard to say.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017)

 

THE BALLAD OF LEFTY BROWN  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jared Moshe

    Bill Pullman, Peter Fonda, Kathy Baker,

    Jim Caviezel, Tommy Flanagan, Diego Josef

Bill Pullman plays an old, illiterate cowboy out to avenge the murder of his partner, played by Peter Fonda. Which is kind of like if you made a Gary Cooper movie and killed off Gary Cooper about ten minutes in and turned the rest of the film over to Walter Brennan or Edgar Buchanan. It's a good role for Pullman, and Fonda gets just enough screen time to suggest what he might've done with something like "Unforgiven". The story's all about loyalty and betrayal, and people don't always get shot in the order you expect. 

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR  (2018)  ¢ ¢

    D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

    Benedict Cumberbatch,  Robert Downey Jr., 

    Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, 

    Scarlett Johansson, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle,

    Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana,

    Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen,

    Idris Elba,  Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Carrie Coon,

    Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Peter Dinklage, 

    Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, Bradley Cooper, 

    Sebastian Stan, Benedict Wong, William Hurt

The entire Marvel Universe turns out to battle the evil Thanos, whose idea of saving the world is to kill half the people in it. It's a battle royal of superheroes, which makes for a big crowd, even in space, so each character gets enough screen time to be recognized, knock off a smart line or two, and do whatever it is they've done in previous adventures to endear themselves to the fans. The movie's long and busy, the script's a chaotic mess, and with so many heroes with so many skills showing up in uniform ready to fight, there's not quite enough for any of them to do. 

Rolling Thunder (1977)

 

ROLLING THUNDER  (1977)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Flynn

    William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes, 

    James Best, Luke Askew, Dabney Coleman

A Vietnam vet returns to the States, damaged after years as a prisoner of war, to a son who doesn't remember him, a wife who's hooked up with another man, and a world that's passed him by. When some lowlifes invade his home, steal his money, gun down his family and shove his hand down the garbage disposal, he bides his time, and then he gets even. William Devane's a curious choice for something like this, not the returning-vet part, but the revenge-with-a-sawed-off-shotgun part, and that's part of what makes the movie work. Want to know what "Coming Home" might've looked like in the hands of Walter Hill or Sam Peckinpah? Something like this.

Dabney Coleman

(1932-2024)

Listomania / Take 13

Some actors who have won at least two Academy Awards:

 Tom Hanks

Jodie Foster

Daniel Day-Lewis

Cate Blanchet

Sean Penn

Meryl Streep

 Denzel Washington

Hilary Swank

Robert De Niro

Emma Stone

Gasoline Rainbow (2023)

GASOLINE RAINBOW  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross

    Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Makai Garza,

    Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia

Five high-school friends, self-styled outcasts who have known each other forever, take off from far eastern Oregon in a beat-up van on a quest to reach the Pacific coast, 513 miles away. It's their last fling before the adult world crashes in on them, and they're not about to waste the chance. It's a bumpy ride and a ragged, scrappy movie, and it captures the strung-out, wild-assed energy you get - and the eclectic cross-section of people you meet - when you're winging it out on the road. Kevin Costner's "Fandango" did a similar thing with a bunch of college guys, and while these kids are less articulate, they're just as lost. The future's not something they're looking forward to (with good reason), but for the moment, or as long as the journey lasts, they're having the time of their lives. They're young, they're free, and they've got each other, and it'll never be this good again.

The Raven (1963)

 

THE RAVEN  (1963)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Roger Corman

    Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff,

    Hazel Court, Jack Nicholson, Olive Sturgess

Price, Lorre and Karloff play rival magicians in a horror comedy based only nominally on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. If it's not the best of the Price/Poe/Corman collaborations, it's at least the goofiest, with a cranky (and substantially improvised) performance by Lorre, whose character has the bad luck to turn into both a bird and a pool of raspberry jam. Very tongue-in-beak.

Roger Corman

(1926-2024)

Asteroid City (2023)

ASTEROID CITY  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Wes Anderson

    Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks,

    Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, 

    Rupert Friend, Liev Schreiber, Tony Rev0lori,

    Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Hope Davis, Tilda Swinton,

    Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe,

    Margot Robbie, Bob Balaban, Fisher Stevens 

Wes Anderson reaches into his magic toy box and comes up with this distinctly Wes Anderson sci-fi fantasy, set in 1955 in the desert somewhere in the vicinity of a nuclear test site.There's a story, kind of, about an alien, but, face it, nobody goes to see a Wes Anderson movie for the plot. You go for the chance to step into his eccentric dream world and hang out for a while. Viewers familiar with the director's work will feel right at home. For those who are not, welcome to Asteroid City.

After Blue (2021)

 

AFTER BLUE  (2021)  ¢ ¢

    D: Bertrand Mandico

    Elina Löwensohn, Paula Luna, Vimala Pons,

    Agata Buzek, Anaïs Thomas, Pauline Lorillard

Maximum weirdness in a dreamscape sci-fi western set on a nightmare planet inhabited entirely by women, two of them on a quest to track down and kill a devious outlaw named Kate Bush. (Drinking Game Advisory: Downing a shot whenever somebody in this movie says "Kate Bush" could be lethal.) It's all kind of pretentious, but Elina Löwensohn looks stylish in a broad-brimmed hat, and in the progression of strange and mystifying encounters, the almost-dead horse and the screaming caterpillars are only the beginning.