Vanishing Point (1997)

 

VANISHING POINT  (1997)  ¢ ¢

    D: Charles Robert Carner

    Viggo Mortensen, Christine Elise, Steve Railsback, 

    Jason Priestley, Keith David, Rodney A. Grant,

    Paul Benjamin, John Doe, Peta Wilson

A television remake of the 1971 car-chase classic, with Viggo Mortensen in the old Barry Newman role as Kowalski, a hero of the highway driving a souped-up Dodge Challenger from New Mexico to Idaho at decidedly unsafe speeds, while an army of cops try to take him in or bring him down. The original movie was primal and existential. This one has backstories and religion. The tire-squealing, gravel-spewing stuntwork is all right, but by the time the asshole lawman played by Steve Railsback throws his badge in the dirt, you know the filmmakers are running out of gas. 

Times Square (1980)

 

TIMES SQUARE  (1980)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Allan Moyle

    Trini Alvarado, Robin Johnson, Tim Curry,

    Peter Coffield, Herbert Berghof, David Margulies

Two teenaged girls, the daughter of a city councilman and a reckless street kid, escape from the psych ward together, steal an ambulance, and embark on a life of adventure on the New York streets. An adolescent fantasy with a full-throttle performance by Robin Johnson as the swaggering, go-for-broke outcast, Nicky. Tim Curry plays the radio D.J. who provides the girls with on-the-air encouragement and publicity from his perch overlooking Times Square. Somebody went on a thrift-store binge to come up with all the cool costumes, and the soundtrack (the Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, etc.) is a time capsule of punk-era hits. The climactic rooftop concert echoes the Beatles' "Let It Be", while anticipating both the 1997 German movie "Bandits" and "Empire Records" (1995), another Allan Moyle film.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

 

THE ZONE OF INTEREST  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Jonathan Glazer 

    Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Martyna Poznanski,

    Medusa Knopf, Audrey Isaev, Stephanie Petrowitz

For most of this movie, you're eavesdropping on the mundane activities of a moderately prosperous German family, the catch being that the dad in this case, the guy with the really bad haircut, is Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and their beautiful house and pool and garden are just outside the wall of the camp. The movie doesn't show you what'g going on on the other side of the wall, but you hear it - the muffled sounds of heavy machinery, shouts, screams, dogs barking, gun shots. You see only what the family sees: the smoke from a passing locomotive, the razor wire on the top of the wall, a glowing red light reflected on the curtains of somebody's bedroom, black smoke coming from the chimneys. But look at this nice fur coat and these clothes that just came in. Yesterday I found a diamond in a tube of toothpaste. Those Jews are clever, aren't they? Here you can (literally) smell the roses.  Why would anybody want to leave? The banality of evil and the evil of banality. This is a horror movie. 

Ice From Space (1952)

 

ICE FROM SPACE  (1952)  ¢ ¢

    D: Don Medford

    Edmon Ryan, Raymond Bailey, 

    Michael Gorrin, Paul Newman

An experimental rocket takes off from Earth and returns two hours off schedule, with a block of radioactive ice on board. It's not clear how the ice got into the rocket, so that's one of the things the characters this story spend a lot of time talking about. Primitive early television, an episode from the sci-fi anthology series "Tales of Tomorrow". Worth watching mainly for the not-yet-commanding presence of Paul Newman in his first credited screen role.

The Hit List: Laurel and Hardy

 

             "You have to learn what people will 

               laugh at, then proceed accordingly."

                Stan Laurel

    Like most people my age or younger (which is most people these days), my introduction to Laurel and Hardy didn't come in a movie house, but on television. Local stations in the 1950s had a lot of air time to fill, and one thing they filled it with was old movies. Assembly-line westerns from the 1930s were a staple, along with comedies from the same era produced by Hal Roach, and Hal Roach meant Laurel and Hardy. 

    Stan Laurel (born in England in 1890) and Oliver Hardy (born in Georgia in 1892) both had comedy careers in silent films before they teamed up, but their chemistry together made them more than the sum of their two parts, and from the time they joined forces working for Roach, they were a team. Laurel (the thin one) was the idea man and the creative force behind their best movies. (He'd come to America as Charlie Chaplin's understudy in a traveling stage company.) But the material really clicked because Hardy (the heavy one) knew exactly what to do with it and played along. 

    From the 1920s to the 1950s, they made more than 100 movies together - silents and talkies, two-reelers and features. The more notable ones include these:

Shorts:

"The Battle of the Century" (1927 / Clyde Bruckman 

and Leo McCarey)

A legendary two-reeler, long lost but lately restored, starting with Stan in a boxing ring getting knocked cold, and ending with the screen's most spectacular pie fight. 

"Big Business" (1929 / James W. Horne and Leo McCarey)

The boys play door-to-door Christmas tree salesmen. James Finlayson (a frequent foil) plays a reluctant customer. They demolish his house. He destroys their car. 

"Double Whoopee" (1929 / Lewis R. Foster)

Stan and Ollie play the footman and doorman at a luxury hotel, where a prince who resembles Erich von Stroheim falls down an elevator shaft and a teenaged Jean Harlow famously loses her skirt. 

"The Music Box" (1932 / James Parrott)

Stan and Ollie try to move a piano up a long, long, long flight of stairs. The movie won an Academy Award.

"Busy Bodies" (1933 / Lloyd French)

Laurel and Hardy go to work in a sawmill, a setup that's as funny as it is terrifying.

Features:

"Sons of the Desert" (1933 / William A. Seiter)

The boys tell their wives they're going to Hawaii for Ollie's health, but sneak off to a lodge convention in Chicago instead. Naturally, the wives find out. The international society of Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts took its name from the title of this film. 

"Babes In Toyland" (1934 / Gus Meins 

and Charley Rogers)

Stan and Ollie play toymakers in a Mother Goose story that used to show up on TV every year at Christmastime. Alternate title; "March of the Wooden Soldiers".

"Way Out West" (1937) / James W. Horne)

This movie contains two of Laurel and Hardy's most famous routines: the soft-shoe dance number in front of the saloon (with backup from Chill Wills and the Avalon Boys) and a vocal duet to "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine".

"Swiss Miss" (1938 / John G. Blystone and Hal Roach)

Stan and Ollie play mousetrap salesmen in Switzerland. They're trying to move a piano (again) across a suspension bridge, when they meet a gorilla . . .

"A Chump At Oxford" (1940 / Alfred J. Goulding)

The boys somehow end up in college in England. A window drops down and hits Stan on the head, turning him into a stuffy academic. A rare chance to see Laurel play something other than his usual dim-witted self. 

Bonus Feature:

"Stan & Ollie" (2018 / Jon S. Baird)

A biopic tracking their last music-hall tour of the UK in 1954. Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly play Laurel and Hardy. They're good.

    Some Laurel and Hardy fans insist that their silent short films are their best, but sound gave them another dimension to work with, and longer running times gave them more room to expand and perfect their slow-building routines. 

    A typical Laurel and Hardy gag would start with something trivial or accidental, but feathers would be ruffled and somebody would be offended, and an escalating game of tit-for-tat would end in apocalyptic chaos. Stan and Ollie did that better than anybody.

    They made all their best movies for Roach. In the 1940s, they move to Fox and MGM, where they had less creative control and their work noticeably declined. Their last movie, "Atoll K" (1951) was a critical and commercial failure, and by then, age and health issues were starting to catch up with them. 

    Stan died 60 years ago and Ollie died in 1957, but their films are still out there. You can find a lot of them on YouTube. 

    Stan, looking confused (and being confused) and Ollie's long-suffering stares into the camera. Ollie twiddling his tie and Stan ruffling his hair. The visual jokes that are twice as funny because you can see the punchline coming, and funnier still when something else immediately tops that. The bowler hats and the "Cuckoo Song". The essential innocence and childlike simplicity of their characters, and their underlying devotion to each other. All trademark Stan and Ollie. 

    The world's not always an amusing place, especially these days, but you can bet it'd be even sadder without Laurel and Hardy.

"Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."

     Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel

     in "Atoll K"

     (Hardy's last words on screen)

Strait-Jacket (1964)

 

STRAIT-JACKET  (1964)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Castle

    Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, 

    Edith Atwater, George Kennedy, John Anthony Hayes, 

    Howard St. John, Rochelle Hudson, Mitchell Cox

Camp horror with Joan Crawford as an ax-murderer who's released from the asylum after 20 years and returns home to her devoted daughter, played by Diane Baker. So she's out, but is she sane, and is it a good idea to let her get within range of the ax farmhand George Kennedy uses to dismember chickens? Better be careful. Part of a cycle of movies that followed in the wake of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?", geriatric thrillers that helped aging stars like Crawford, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland and Tallulah Bankhead extend their careers. Crawford goes all-out - over the top, over the edge, off a cliff and down the next ravine. Keep an eye on the Columbia Pictures logo at the very end and see if you notice anything unusual. 

Sing Sing (2023)

 

SING SING  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Greg Kwedar

    Colman Domingo, Clarence Maclin, Sean San Jose,

    Paul Raci, David Giraudy, Patrick Griffin, Mosi Eagle

This is like a feature-length movie about an acting class, with the spotlight on a theater group made up of inmates rehearsing a comedy to be performed behind bars. The movie and the play that's being rehearsed - a crazed mashup of pirates, ancient Egyptians, time travel and "Hamlet" - reflect off each other, with the actors mostly ex-cons playing themselves. It steers clear of the real bad stuff that goes with being in a maximum-security prison, but you do get a claustrophobic sense of what it feels like to be locked up, and how any kind of creative outlet - in this case theater - can help keep the demons at bay.

The Sun Also Rises (1957)

 

THE SUN ALSO RISES  (1957)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Henry King

    Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer,

    Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Juliette Greco,

    Gregory Ratoff, Robert Evans, Henry Daniell

In the "making of" feature on the DVD of "The Sun Also Rises", screenwriter Peter Viertel and others talk about the challenges involved in making a movie out of Ernest Hemingway's book. One of them has to do with Viertel's observation that the novel hasn't got much of a plot. Another involves Hemingway's approach to writing it, keeping much of what's going on below the surface and off the page. And there's the casting, with actors who are visibly too old for the characters in the story. Tyrone Power gives a bland preformance as Hemingway's war-damaged protagonist, Jake Barnes, a part that would've been perfect for Montgomery Clift. Ava Gardner as Brett Ashley, the woman at the center of it all, isn't hard to watch, but looks more like a 1950s movie star then a 1920s bohemian. Errol Flynn has a colorful late-career role as an aging playboy who won't let being broke and on the road to ruin get in the way of a good time. The craziest casting choice has Robert Evans as a dopey-looking matador who hooks up with Gardner. A lot of the movie is just people hanging out in cafes and bars, drinking. Don't try to keep up with them.

Suzanna Andler (2021)

 

SUZANNA ANDLER  (2021)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Benoît Jacquot

    Charlotte Gainsbourg, Neils Schneider, 

    Julia Roy, Nathan Wilcocks 

A woman who's wealthy and bored mopes around a seaside villa she's thinking of renting for two million euros a month. She talks briefly with the real estate agent, and then with the guy she's cheating on her husband with and a woman with whom her husband has cheated on her. Sometimes, just to break the monotony, she and her lover smoke cigarettes. (Did I mention the movie is French?) The woman is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, sporting a rich-girl look and wardrobe, and there are some exceptionally long takes, which is something, I guess, but the movie just drags on and on for what feels like days, and then it's over, but not soon enough.

Picture Claire (2001)

 

PICTURE CLAIRE  (2001)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Bruce McDonald

    Juliette Lewis, Gina Gershon, Callum Keith Rennie,

    Camilla Rutherford, Peter Stebbings, Kelly Harms,

    Tracy Wright, Raoul Bhaneja, Mickey Rourke

Juliette Lewis plays a small-time thief and sometime police informant who escapes from Montreal after some drug dealers torch her apartment. She lands in Toronto, broke and at loose ends, but trouble seems to follow her everywhere. I wouldn't know whether Juliette's French is any good, but she doesn't say much, so maybe it's okay. Mickey Rourke is his usual scuzzy self and (thankfully) gets killed off in the opening reel. The late Tracy Wright turns up as a police detective and gets just enough screen time to make you wish she'd stuck around a lot longer. In the pantheon of escapist thrillers you've probably never heard of, this is a good one. Made in Canada.

Time of the Heathen (1961)

 

TIME OF THE HEATHEN  (1961)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Peter Kass

    John Heffernan, Stewart Heller, Barry Collins, 

    Orville Stewart, Ethel Ayler, Nathaniel White

In a remote rural area, presumably in the South, a black woman is raped and murdered. The most convenient suspect, guilty or not, is a drifter passing through on foot, wearing a black suit and carrying a Bible in his pocket. He and a mute young boy - the dead woman's son - are also potential witnesses, and a couple of rednecks armed with rifles give them a running start and then start hunting them down. A gothic nightmare shot cheaply in black and white, played with unsettling conviction by a no-name cast. It's like George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", but without the zombies - not as gruesome and just as creepy.

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

 

ONE CUT OF THE DEAD  (2017)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Shin'ichirô Ueda

    Takayaki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Harumi Shuhama,

    Kazuaki Nagaya, Manabu Hosoi, Hiroshi Ichihara

A film within a film within a film within a film about a television crew trying to shoot a 30-minute zombie picture live in one take with no cuts. First you see what they shot. Then you see how they shot it. Lots of fake blood, a severed arm, a severed head, a video camera, a bottle of sake, an 

ax . . . 

The North Water (2021)

 

THE NORTH WATER  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Andrew Haigh

    Jack O'Connell, Colin Farrell, Sam Spruell, 

    Stephen Graham, Peter Mullan, Tom Courtenay

A gripping survival adventure about a 19th-century whaling ship that sails too far up into the Arctic and gets stuck in the ice. Tom Courtenay plays the ship's owner, who has paid off the captain (Stephen Graham) to sink the vessel, hoping to collect the insurance. Colin Farrell plays a harpooner named Henry Drax, a swaggering brute whose pastimes include drinking, whoring, molesting cabin boys and  killing for the fun of it. Jack O'Connell plays the ship's surgeon, addicted to laudanum and on the run from a troubled past. You won't find much warmth in this anywhere, but it keeps you engaged (and glad not to be in the Arctic), and Farrell's performance is frightening. 

Showgirl Murders (1999)

 

SHOWGIRL MURDERS  (1999)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Dave Payne

    Maria Ford, Matt Preston, D.S. Case, Kevin Alber,

    Bob McFarland, Jeffrey Douglas, C.B. Baldwin,

    Floyd Baldwin, Jane Stowe, Crescendo, Nikki Fritz 

A girl walks into a bar and talks her way into a job serving drinks for tips. Before long, she's onstage dancing in a thong, the men are lining up with their dollar bills, and the money's pouring in. And there are murders. A less-than-captivating erotic thriller off the straight-to-video assembly line, with exotic dancer and B-movie siren Maria Ford as the resident femme fatale. Ford choreographed the dance routines, which are easily the high point of the film. 

Shopworn (1932)

 

SHOPWORN  (1932)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Nick Grinde

    Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Zasu Pittiș,

    Lucien Littlefield, Clara Blandick, Oscar Apfel

Barbara Stanwyck plays a woman whose old man gets killed in a dynamite accident but before he goes he tells her she's on her own now and she's got to be tough so she moves to the city and starts waitressing in a hash joint where she meets a young med student and they hit it off and decide to get married but his domineering mother tricks them and arranges to have her sent to a reformatory where she does her time scrubbing floors and when she gets out she becomes a chorus girl and then a famous actress and she meets up with the med student again and he's a surgeon now but she gives him the brush because she thinks he dumped her when it was really his evil old lady who's still around telling him what to do and then some stuff happens involving a gun and the battle-ax has a change of heart and true love and real romance triumph after all fade out the end. Barbara Stanwyck. What a dame. 

Merrill's Marauders (1962)

MERRILL'S MARAUDERS  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Samuel Fuller

    Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Peter Brown,

    Will Hutchins, Andrew Duggan, Claude Akins,

    John Hoyt, Charles Briggs, Pancho Magalona

An old-fashioned, World-War-Two combat movie about an American volunteer force slugging its way through the mountains and jungles of Burma to take on the Japanese. Sam Fuller knew something about combat, but he also knew that a movie was a movie, and one thing you notice in this is that when guys die (and a lot of them do), they do it in the same graceful, dramatic, stylized way that we did as kids playing soldier in the back yard. I could swear there's even one guy who goes into his death spiral before the grenade that kills him goes off. Not many of the actual Marauders survived the Burma campaign, but they did stop the Japanese from getting to India. There's a whole other movie waiting to be made about whether the death toll - on both sides - was worth it. 

Piaffe (2022)

 

PIAFFE  (2022)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ann Oren

    Simone Bucio, Sebastian Rudolph, Lea Draeger,

    Simon Jaikiriuma Paetau, Josef Ostendorf

An elegant erotic fantasy about a woman who's doing sound design for a commercial that features a horse, and finds herself transforming in a most unusual way. It risks being silly, but Simone Bucio's daring performance transcends that, bringing a whole new dimension to the concept of being trans. And she has a nice tail.

The Outrun (2024)

 

THE OUTRUN  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Nora Fingscheidt

    Saoirse Ronan, Stephen Dillane, Saskia Reeves

Saoirse Ronan singlehandedly holds this one together as a reckless young woman named Rona who leaves London for the Orkney Islands to try to get sober. The tales, legends and desolate, windswept landscapes of the islands help tell the story, and Ronan goes places she hasn't explored before as a smart, troubled girl whose giddy energy lights up the party till the moment her demon takes over and you can't get away from her fast enough. Anybody who's struggled with recovery, or knows somebody who has, will be able to relate. 

The Seventh Coin (1993)

 

THE SEVENTH COIN  (1993)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Dror Soref

    Peter O'Toole, Alexandra Powers, Navin Chowdhry,

    John Rhys-Davies, Ally Walker, Jill Novick, Gilat Ankori

An Arab boy and a Jewish-American girl get caught up in an adventure that takes them all over Jerusalem, when they come into the possession of a rare coin that dates back to the time of King Herod. It seems there are seven coins all together, dug up in the ruins at Masada, and a murderous criminal played by Peter O'Toole will stop at nothing to have them all in his collection. It's formula stuff, with some nice location work and appealing performances by the juvenile leads. O'Toole looks weary, but with a wide selection of elegant wardrobe options, you can't say he's not well-dressed. 

Rifkin's Festival (2020)

 

RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Woody Allen

    Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Elena Anaya,

    Louis Garrel, Douglas McGrath, Steve Guttenberg,

    Sergi Lopez, Tammy Blanchard, Christoph Waltz

This is not the worst late-career Woody Allen movie to come along, which is faint praise maybe, but there it is. Wallace Shawn plays a film critic and would-be novelist, tagging along with his wife (Gina Gershon), who's working publicity at the San Sebastian Film Festival. While she spends most of her time with a hot young director (Louis Garrel), he starts to fall for an attractive doctor (Elena Anaya), so here's yet another Woody Allen movie dealing with love, infatuation and infidelity among people who are too smart for their own good. (At least this time, one of the protagonists is not a 20-year-old girl.) The best parts are the dream sequences. (Shawn's character always dreams scenes from classic movies, in black and white.) Welles, Truffaut, Bergman, Fellini, Godard and Bunuel are all represented, so there's at least a faint echo of "Stardust Memories going on, and if you stay till the end, you get a riff on "The Seventh Seal" with Christoph Waltz as Death.

Phantom Ship (1935)

PHANTOM SHIP  (1935)  ¢ ¢

    D: Denison Clift 

    Bela Lugosi, Shirley Grey, Arthur Margetson,

    Edmund Willard, Dennis Hoey, George Mozart

In 1872, a merchant vessel sets sail for Genoa, carrying a cargo of liquor, a crew of 13, a woman, a black cat and Bela Lugosi. This is not going to end well, is what I'm thinking, and when the ship turns up adrift in the Atlantic later on, there's not a trace of anybody on board. A speculation based on an actual incident, one of the unsolved mysteries of the sea. The movie's not much, but Lugosi's good.

Flashback: A Few Nights At the Movies

    I once watched "The Maltese Falcon" in a tiny, storefront theater on Cannery Row. It was 1975, and I was in my Jack Kerouac phase, bumming around the country in a well-traveled Ford Mustang with money I'd saved in the Air Force. What was distinctive about Monterey's 812 Cinema, apart from its hole-in-the-wall size, was that there were no seats, just pillows and cushions on the floor, so you more or less reclined while you watched the movie. Which could be a problem if you were real tired. I think I fell asleep. 

    I once watched Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" in the Stiftskeller in the Memorial Union  at the University of Wisconsin. The Stiftskeller was a small room just off the Rathskeller (a much larger room), and the screening was probably put on by one of the campus film societies. The place was packed, standing rom only, so I stood. Through the whole movie. This was the late '60s, before VHS, DVD and TCM. Before cable. Before video stores. Before streaming. Back then, if something like "The Great Dictator" turned up and you wanted to see it, you went. There was no guarantee you'd get another chance. Also, there weren't a lot of indoor smoking regulations and a lot of people smoked, which added to the ambience, I suppose. The Stiftskeller was definitely smoky.

    I once watched "Night of the Living Dead" at the Badger Drive-In in Madison. This was in the late '70s, and it was one of the films on a dusk-to-dawn quintuple feature, along with "Toolbox Murders", "Hollywood Meat Cleaver Massacre", "Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon" and "Mansion of the Doomed". I don't remember whether it was my brother Bill or me who saw the ad in the paper, but the moment it crossed our radar, we knew we had to go. We weren't the only ones who did, but we might've been the only ones who stayed awake through all five movies. As a public service, the concession stand provided free coffee and donuts to the survivors around 3:30 in the morning.

    I once watched "Tony Rome" and "The Green Berets" on a double bill at another Wisconsin drive-in. I don't remember what town it was, but the year would've been 1968. I had a summer job on a traffic survey crew with the state highway department, and we always stayed in cheap motels when we were on the road away from Madison. On this occasion, our motel was about a mile down the road from a drive-in theater, so as evening approached, I hiked down there, walked in the exit, found a place to sit under an available speaker, turned up the volume and watched both movies. I haven't seen "The Green Berets" since. 

    After 70 years or more watching flickering images flash across various screens, some experiences are bound to stand out, and the more offbeat they are, the more likely they are to stick in your memory. For me, the best was this:

    About 25 years ago, there was a screening of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" in Seattle's Gas Works Park. It was summer, so it was warm, and people brought food and blankets and found places to sit on the hill facing the iron wreckage that was once the city's gas works. Lang's vision of a dystopian future played out with all that industrial junk in the background, under a full moon, while a live orchestra played an original score timed to sync with the film. As a moviegoing event, it was magical, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. 

    Sometimes the stars line up and the cinema gods look your way and something comes along that's just too good (or crazy, or comical, or weird) to pass up. You can't anticipate an experience like that. When it happens, you've just got to go. 

The Moderns (1988)

 

THE MODERNS  (1988)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alan Rudolph

    Keith Carradine, Linda Fiorentino, Genevieve Bujold,

    Geraldine Chaplin, John Lone, Wallace Shawn, 

    Kevin J. O'Connor, Elsa Raven, Isabel Serra, Ali Giron

Alan Rudolph's whimsical reflection  on art and deception takes place in Paris in 1926. (Montreal plays Paris.) Keith Carradine plays Nicky Hart, a painter whose copies of Cezanne and Modigliani are so good, you can't tell them from the real thing. He's got an agent, a gallery owner played by Genevieve Bujold, but his work hasn't sold, so he keeps himself in oils and cognac by drawing newspaper cartoons. This is the Lost Generation, so Hemingway's around, played by Kevin J. O'Connor, and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and a few unidentified others. There's a rubber baron (John Lone), a vulgar industrialist who views the world and everything in it through the prism of money, and his wife (Linda Fiorentino), who's secretly still married to Hart. A wealthy collector (Geraldine Chaplin), who tries to entice Hart into doing a little forgery. A newspaper columnist (Wallace Shawn), who can't stop talking about suicide. And that covers most of the key players. It's Rudolph in total command of his craft, working with a cast that's perfectly in tune with what he's up to, and it's a sometimes surreal comedy ending with a series of devious jokes about the pretensions of the art world and the people in it. If that's something that interests you, or you just want to spend a couple of hours hanging out in Hemingway's Paris, check it out.

Samba (2014)

SAMBA  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Oliver Nakache, Éric Toledano

    Omar Sy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tahar Rahim,

    Youngar Fall, Issakla Sawadogo, Izïa Higelin

A French movie about the tentative relationship between an undocumented immigrant from Senegal, scuffling to survive and escape deportation, and a burned-out caseworker who has issues of her own. Life in the shadows. Love on the edge. Nicely acted by Sy and Gainsbourg. 

Marlowe (2022)

 

MARLOWE  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Neil Jordan

    Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange,

    Danny Huston, Alan Cumming, Ian Hart,

    Colm Meaney, Adele Akinnouye-Agbaje,

    Seána Kerslake, François Arnaud, Patrick Muldoon

Liam Neeson adds his name to the long list of actors who have played Philip Marlowe in a twisty noir mystery set in 1939 Los Angeles. The story's a puzzle involving the corpse of a guy who may not be dead and certain items being smuggled from Mexico, and there's more than a hint of "Chinatown", with a lot of corruption, a troubled mother and daughter (Jessica Lange and Diane Kruger, who look enough alike to be convincing), and Danny Huston as a character who conspicuously resembles the monster his father played in the earlier film. It's a movie whose parts don't always match up. The music's anachronistic, the cinematography (which director Neil Jordan admits was influenced by "Blade Runner") looks a little too crisp and clean, and some of the turns the plot takes are implausibly convenient. Plus, Neeson at 70 seems a little mature to be playing Marlowe. It's enhanced by an odd sense of dislocation - it was shot in Spain and Ireland - and a script that never stops throwing you curveballs. Sometimes there are movies you like without knowing quite why, and sometimes that's part of the puzzle. I guess for me, one of those movies is "Marlowe".

Salambo (1911)

 

SALAMBO  (1911)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Arturo Ambrosio

    Gigetta Morano, Giovanni Coppo, Oreste Grandi,

    Alberto Capozzi, Ercole Vaser, Maria Bay

Some mercenaries help the Carthaginians fight off the invading Romans, but then the Carthaginians try to cheat the mercenaries out of their payment in gold, which turns out to be a bad idea. Italian filmmakers were the first to realize there was money to be made (and spent) on grandiose historical epics. This one has hundreds of extras, opulent sets and costumes, horses, camels and a lion. You can bet Cecil B. DeMille was watching and taking notes. 

Maxxxine (2024)

 

MAXXXINE  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ti West

    Mia Goth, Simon Prast, Kevin Bacon, Deborah Geffner,

    Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Halsey, Lily Collins,

    Chloe Farnworth, Giancarlo Esposito, Zachary Mooren,

    Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Sophie Thatcher

The third entry in the Ti West/Mia Goth horror trilogy finds Maxine Minx, the sole survivor of the massacre in "X", in Hollywood, still working in the skin trade, but determined to make it big in mainstream films. Also, there's a serial killer on the loose, the "night stalker," whose victims all appear to be connected to Maxine. West is at least as interested in the workings of the movie industry as he is in the maniac-on-the-loose storyline, and it's another picture that makes you thankful to be living anywhere except Hollywood. It's set in 1985, and it has the look of a low-budget thriller viewed on an old VHS tape. (Be kind. Rewind.) The synth-driven musical score fits the period, too, along with Kevin Bacon, chewing everything except the Hollywood sign as  an obnoxious private eye. It's Mia Goth's movie, though. With an on-screen producer's credit and her name above the title, there's no doubt she's the star, and she plays her role with a naked yearning for the attention her character believes she deserves. Maxine herself wouldn't have it any other way.

Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Stephen Frears

    Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Christopher Guest, Will Young,

    Kelly Reilly, Thelma Barlow, Natalia Tena, Toby Jones,

    Anna Brewster, Rosalind Halstead, Sarah Solemani

Judi Dench plays a wealthy widow who finds a productive use for her time and money when she buys a derelict London theater and hires Bob Hoskins to run the place. The vaudeville-style revues they put on are a hit at first, but when copycat competition causes attendance to decline, she comes up with a daring idea: naked girls. The time is the 1930s and stodgy old England has never seen anything like it, and as the country heads into World War Two, the theater, running continuously, even during the Blitz, becomes a symbol of steadfastness - and a sense of fun - in the face of peril. It's an affectionate look at a time gone by, and a compelling testament to the notion that a few boobs and backsides, artfully exhibited, aren't necessarily a bad thing. 

Murder Rock: Dancing Death

 

MURDER ROCK: DANCING DEATH  (1984)  ¢ ¢

    D: Lucio Fulci

    Olga Karlatos, Ray Lovelock, Claudio Cassinelli,

    Cosimo Cinieri, Belinda Busato, Maria Vittoria Tolazzi,

    Carla Buzzanca, Angela Lemerman, Silvia Collatina

A killer stalks the students at a New York dance school, dispatching them with chloroform and a hatpin. Whodunit? Who cares?

Murder At Yellowstone City (2022)

MURDER AT YELLOWSTONE CITY  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Gray 

    Gabriel Byrne, Isaiah Mustafa, Thomas Jane, 

    Anna Camp, Aimee Garcia, Scottie Thompson,

    Isabella Ruby, Richard Dreyfuss, John Ales

When a gold prospector strikes it rich and turns up murdered, the local sheriff wastes no time finding a convenient suspect, a black man who just rode into town. He promises a trial followed by a quick hanging, but the woman who runs the livery stable turns up evidence that shows he's put the wrong guy in jail. There are more murders, with people getting their throats cut, followed by a climactic gunfight in which many more people are shot and killed. There are some interesting wrinkles in this: John Ales and Richard Dreyfuss as a couple of old guys who would be flying a pride flag over the saloon if they weren't in 1881 Montana, and a loose community of women who in most ways are smarter than the men. Most of the characters have secrets, and most are dealing with crippling loss. Tense performances by Scottie Thompson as the murder victim's grieving widow and Gabriel Byrne as a no-nonsense lawman who's more committed to the appearance of justice than the real thing. 

Murderdrome (2013)

 

MURDERDROME  (2013)  ¢ ¢

    D: Daniel Armstrong

    Daisy Masterman, Rachel Blackwood, Jake Brown,

    Demonique Deluxe, Gerry Mahoney, Max Marchione,

    Pepper Minx, Mary Poppenskulls, Dayna Seville

Tough-talking roller-derby babes take on a witch queen from hell. Choppings, stabbings, burnings and beheadings follow, backed by a death-metal soundtrack. Bare-bones horror, made in Australia for next to no money and shot at night, so the cast and crew could go to their day jobs. Plotting and character development are minimal, but it's got attitude, and the effects look better than you might expect. The girls never take off their skates.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)

 

ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING  

(1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

    Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams,

    Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden, Emrys Jones,

    Googie Withers, Pamela Brown, Joyce Redman,

    Hay Petrie, Robert Helpmann, Peter Ustinov

Six crewmen on an RAF bomber bail out over the Netherlands after an attack on Stuttgart. Courageous Dutch villagers hide them from the Nazis and help them escape. World War Two heroics done entirely without music, which you notice after a while by its absence. Two early scenes in the plane stand out: a fourth-wall-bashing bit in which the camera pans around and the flyers take turns introducing themselves, and the part moments later when they exchange stories about the girls they've met in Stuttgart, even as they're on their way to bomb them. The editor was David Lean. A young (and remarkably thin) Peter Ustinov appears briefly as a parish priest. One sign that this might be a Powell and Pressburger film: The plane, after the men have jumped, sputters back to life and continues to fly on its own.

Free (2022)

 

FREE  (2022)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Autumn de Wilde 

    Florence Welch, Bill Nighy

A music video for the Florence & the Machine song "Free", shot on location in Kyiv and dedicated to the people of Ukraine. Florence (as "Herself") delivers the tune and dances with spastic abandon, while Bill Nighy (as "Her Anxiety") makes a phone call.

Justine: The Misfortunes of Virtue (1977)

JUSTINE: THE MISFORTUNES OF VIRTUE 

    D: Chris Boger                                           (1977)  ¢ ¢

    Koo Stark, Martin Potter, Lydia Lisle,

    Katherine Kath, Hope Jackman, Louis Ife 

Cast out of the convent, an innocent young girl tries to safeguard her virtue in a world that never stops trying to take it away. Some of de Sade's philosophy comes through in this, but it's overplayed, episodic and depraved without being all that interesting. Koo Stark had a brief fling in the spotlight when she hooked up romantically with Britain's Prince Andrew, but her participation in movies like this one did not play well at Buckingham Palace. Roger Deakins did the camerawork. 

His Double Life (1933)

HIS DOUBLE LIFE  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Arthur Hopkins

    Roland Young, Lillian Gish, Montagu Love,

    Charles Richman, Lucy Beaumont, Lumsden Hare

A famous but reclusive artist tries to dodge the spotlight when a case of mistaken identity makes everybody think he's dead. Roland Young plays the artist with Topper-like befuddlement. Lillian Gish, whose specialty during the silent era was heavy-duty drama, tries out her screwball skills and shows she's good at comedy, too. 

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

 

KINDS OF KINDNESS  (2024)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Yorgos Lanthimos

    Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, Willem Dafoe,

    Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Hunter Schafer

Yorgos Lanthimos follows up "Poor Things" with a trilogy of oddities in which the same actors play different roles in three loosely connected stories. In the first, Jesse Plemmons plays a corporate toady with Willem Dafoe as his godlike boss. In the second, Plemmons plays a cop who suspects his wife (Emma Stone) may not really be his wife. In the third, Plemmons and Stone are members of a cult, bombing around in a sporty Dodge Challenger and trying to find a woman with a specific set of attributes, who they hope will be able to raise the dead. It's all more strange than compelling, and the stories feel a little incomplete, but you don't want to look away. You'll probably miss something if you do, and with Lanthimos at the controls, you never know what that will be. Bonus highlight, if you stay all the way to the end: Stone's loopy, parking-lot dance routine. 

Maciste In Hell (1925)

MACISTE IN HELL  (1925)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Guido Brignone 

    Bartolomeo Pagano, Umberto Guarracino,

    Elena Sangro, Lucia Zanussi, Pauline Polaire,

    Franz Sala, Domenico Serra, Mario Saio

A legendary strongman gets tricked by a devil and ends up in hell, where there's a new rule: If he kisses a female demon within three days, he has to stay forever. And with all those provocative demons lounging around in their pre-Code costumes, it's going to be tough. Fortunately, there's another rule: If you're mentioned in a little kid's prayers back on earth, you win a get-out-of-hell free card. It's an old-style vision of hell - the Italians always knew how to do that - but the technique looks primitive - more 1910 than 1925. Whoever landed the pitchfork concession made a bundle on this. 

Quote File / Take 27

 

Some lines from the movies of Terence Stamp:

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: No more 

  fucking ABBA."

  Stamp in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"

"Well, you did your job, so I suppose I can't kill 

  your wife."

  Stamp to Dalip Singh in "Get Smart"

"The universe is full  0f surprises." 

  Stamp in "Red Planet"

"A woman like you does more damage than she 

  can conceivably imagine." 

  Stamp to Julie Christie in "Far From the Madding Crowd"

"I love the movies."

  Stamp in "My Wife Is an Actress"

"No one ever really disappears. They're always 

  around somewhere." 

  Stamp in "Last Night In Soho"

                                             (1938-2025)

Lawless Heart (2001)

 

LAWLESS HEART  (2001)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Tom Hunsinger, Neil Hunter

    Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Douglas Henshall, 

    Sukie Smith, Clémentine Célarié, Josephine Butler,

    Ellie Haddington, Stuart Laing, Dominic Hall

A bittersweet comedy about lives connecting and coming apart in the aftermath of a funeral. The story spins out and doubles back on itself as various characters move into and out of the spotlight. A dog, a scarf, a corkscrew, an old movie projector and some coconuts all figure into the script. Keep an eye on Douglas Henshall as a fereeloading opportunist named Tim and see if he doesn't remind you of an "Alfie"-era Michael Caine.

Helen of Troy (1956)

 

HELEN OF TROY  (1956)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Wise

    Rossana Podesta, Jacques Sernas, Cedric Hardwicke,

    Niall MacGinnis, Torin Thatcher, Harry Andrews,

    Brigitte Bardot, Stanley Baker, Robert Douglas,

    Ronald Lewis, Nora Swinburne, Janette Scott

The Trojan War, with massive battle scenes, lavish production design, thousands of extras and a talky script. Oh, and there's a big, wooden horse. You'll need to brush up on your Homer to keep track of all the characters, but there is an on-screen credit for "Bacchanal Choreography," so at least they got that right. Brigitte Bardot has a supporting role as Andraste, Helen's devoted slave, but if you're making a movie about Helen of Troy and Brigitte Bardot's in it, shouldn't Helen be played by Brigitte Bardot?

La Chimera (2023)

 

LA CHIMERA  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Alice Rohrwacher

    Josh O'Connor, Carol Duarte, Isabella Rossellini,

    Vincenzo Nemolato, Giuliano Mantovani,

    Ramona Fiorini, Gian Piero Capretto

An archeologist just out of prison for grave robbing falls back in with the gang of thieves who set him up. With an uncanny ability to locate buried antiquities, he and his divining rod go back to work, and what he uncovers this time could either make him rich or get him killed. There's a lot of early Fellini in this, with the outlaws doubling as a ragtag group of actors, and a touch of magic realism and a dash of "The Lost King" thrown in. And there's a moral: If you want to make a killing in contraband Etruscan art, be rich. If you're not, they'll let you do the dirty work, but when it comes to the big score, and maybe staying out of jail, forget it. You're screwed.

How To Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI  (1965)  ¢ ¢

    D: William Asher

    Annette Funicello, Dwayne Hickman, Mickey Rooney,

    Buster Keaton, Brian Donlevy, Harvey Lembeck,

    Beverly Adams, Jody McRae, Len Lesser,

    Ilene Tsu, Marianne Gaba, Frankie Avalon

Frankie's off in the South Pacific with the Naval Reserve, but the rest of the gang is still hanging out at the beach. The plot? It don't matter. Buster Keaton, Mickey Rooney and Brian Donlevy are in it, and there's some back projection that looks terrible (but who cares?), and Dobie Gillis fills in for Frankie, because Annette has to not hook up with somebody (and she's still the only girl in Malibu not wearing a bikini). An undemanding time filler, from a more innocent time maybe, innocuous, even by "Beach Party" standards. The Kingsmen show up long enough to play a tune, but it's not "Louie Louie".

Lourdes (2009)

 

LOURDES  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jessica Hausner

    Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Bruno Tedeschini,

    Elina Löwensohn, Gilette Barbier, Gerhard Liebmann

For those not steeped in Catholic lore and legend, Lourdes is a place in France where the Virgin Mary is said to have made a personal appearance, witnessed by a peasant girl named Bernadette, in 1858. For a long time since then, Lourdes has been a place where crippled, sick, paralyzed and otherwise debilitated pilgrims go to pray to the Virgin for relief from their afflictions. If the way it's depicted in this quiet, meditative movie is accurate, Lourdes isn't just about faith and healing. It's a whole tourist industry that makes the Dickeyville Grotto look like, well, the Dickeyville Grotto. (You don't know about the Dickeyville Grotto? Then never mind.) One of those who comes to Lourdes is a young woman in a wheelchair, a paraplegic named Christine, played with beatific stillness by Sylvie Testud. She admits she goes on these religious excursions not so much because she believes, but to escape her confined existence. (She prefers cultural outings to religious ones.) To reveal what happens to Christine at Lourdes would reveal too much, but the movie tracks her stay there with restraint and a documentary-like detachment that both acknowledges and transcends the kitsch that surrounds her. The rationalizations the tour group leaders provide for God's role in all this seem pretty hollow. Testud's performance is anything but. 

Lady In Cement (1968)

 

LADY IN CEMENT  (1968)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gordon Douglas

    Frank Sinatra, Raquel Welch, Dan Blocker,

    Richard Conte, Martin Gabel, Lainie Kazan,

    Pat Henry, Richard Deacon, Virginia Wood

Frank's second outing as wiseguy private eye Tony Rome, who's out diving off his boat one day when he comes across a woman at the bottom of the sea with her feet encased in a block of cement. That leads to an investigation involving a gangster (Martin Gabel), a giant (Dan Blocker) and Raquel Welch as a woman who has money and a drinking problem and looks real good in a bikini. Sinatra gets to act tough and tell people off, which apparently he liked to do, but the actor who gets your attention is Blocker, who does just enough to make you wonder what he might've done with a part like Lennie in "Of Mice and Men". Watch for the references to "Bonanza" and a once-famous commercial for canned vegetables, and consider how many people these days would even get the joke. 

Longlegs (2024)

 

LONGLEGS  (2o24)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Osgood Perkins

    Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood,

    Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby

An FBI agent, psychic or autistic or possibly both, gets involved in the hunt for a serial killer played by a bonkers Nicolas Cage. Suspension of disbelief could be hard to come by with this one, unless you look at the whole movie as a sort of fucked-up dream. None of it really adds up, but Maika Monroe is effectively understated as the agent, and Cage's wigged-out performance could've been modeled on Tiny Tim.

Bowanga Bowanga (1951)

 

BOWANGA BOWANGA  (1951)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Dawn

    Lewis Wilson, Morton C. Thompson, Don Orlando,

    Dana Wilson, Charleen Hawks, Frances Dubay

Pith-helmeted adventurers are captured by "the white sirens of Africa," an unlikely tribe of female warriors who are in the market for a few good men. The amazon queen wants to take the biggest and hunkiest of the men for herself and sacrifice the others to the Fire God, but the rest of the girls think that's a terrible waste of men and stage a rebellion. So there's some singing and dancing, and a couple of catfights, and two of the men get into wrestling matches with two of the women, and eventually the guys make their escape because one of them was thoughtful enough to pack a small arsenal of fireworks to bring along on the expedition. Which is, like, a spoiler, I guess, but it's useful to know that if you're in Africa being chased by 20 or 30 savage women, a cache of fireworks could be your key to survival.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS  (1948)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Foster 

    Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine, Robert Newton, 

    Jay Novello, Grizelda Harvey, Aminta Dyne

A damaged war veteran, plagued by bouts of uncontrolled violence, kills a man in a bar, meets a nice girl, and gets blackmailed into doing some dirty work in an efficiently made him noir shot in Hollywood but set in foggy London. Nicely underplayed by Fontaine and Lancaster, with a nasty turn by Robert Newton as the hoodlum who sets Burt up. The ending feels a little contrived, but that's a great film noir title, don't you think?