Conclave (2024)

 

CONCLAVE  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edward Berger

    Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow,

    Lucian Msamati, Sergio Castellitto, Carlos Diehz,

    Isabella Rossellini, Brian F. O'Byrne, Jacek Koman

The pope is dead, the seal is broken, the red-robed cardinals are gathered in the Vatican to choose a new pontiff, and skullduggery is afoot. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, whose job is to see that the election goes smoothly, which, of course, it doesn't. Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow play two of the key candidates, and there are a couple of others, plus a new cardinal nobody's heard of, because he was appointed by the late pope in secret. So there's politicking and jockeying for votes, and a debate over whether a progressive or a reactionary should be the next head of the Church. Some of this is far-fetched, but it's a good piece of storytelling with a whopper of a surprise at the end for those who don't know the outcome going in. (Spoiler Alert: It's something that would definitely shake up the Church.) And with that, Cardinal Lawrence, tense and troubled throughout the conclave, allows himself the barest hint of a smile.

Intolerance (1916)

 

INTOLERANCE  (1916)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: D.W. Griffith

    Mae Marsh, Constance Talmadge, Robert Harron,

    Lillian Gish, Miriam Cooper, Bessie Love, 

    Margery Wilson, Eugene Pallette, Alfred Paget,

    Josephine Crowell, Elmer Clifton, Seena Owen

Griffith's monumental silent epic chronicles human bigotry through four different historical eras - ancient Babylon, Palestine at the time of Christ, 16th-century France and contemporary America. Incredibly, all four stories are told simultaneously, intercut to show the dramatic and moral parallels between them. One of the great pioneer works in the history of movies, it looks archaic now, partly because of the director's unrestrained romanticism, but more because of Griffith's primal influence on every other filmmaker who followed. No other filmmaker ever made a movie like this.

Let's Rock (1958)

LET'S ROCK  (1958)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Harry Foster

    Julius La Rosa, Phyllis Newman, Conrad Janis,

    Joy Harmon, Harold Gary, Fred Kareman

Does anybody remember Julius La Rosa? For those who don't, Julius La Rosa was a moderately successful 1950s crooner and a protege of Arthur Godfrey, who had a television show on which La Rosa frequently appeared. In this 1950s movie, La Rosa plays a crooner who hits a career crisis when he finds he's being edged off the charts by this new thing called rock-&-roll. La Rosa's not much of an actor, affable and a little bland, but he has a couple of nice scenes with Phyllis Newman that look partly improvised, shot on location in New York. He sings three ballads in his smooth crooner's voice, before caving to Phyllis and trying a rock number. Others in the musical lineup include Della Reese, Paul Anka and the late Wink Martindale. Apparently, this film marks the only screen appearance of both The Royal Teens ("Short Shorts") and Danny and the Juniors ("At the Hop"). It's worth watching just for that. 

Wink Martindale

(1933-2025)

Black Snake Moan (2006)

 

BLACK SNAKE MOAN  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Craig Brewer

    Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson, Justin Timberlake,

    S. Epatha Merkerson, Michael Raymond-James

    John Cothran, David Banner, Kim Richards

A dramatized blues riff shot in and around Memphis, about an old black farmer (Samuel L. Jackson) and a troubled nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) who turns up beaten and half-naked on the road that goes by his house. Thinking she won't be around long, he takes her in, cleans up her bruises and gets some medicine for her cough. When he finds out the true nature of her affliction, he chains her to the radiator, still in her underwear, and that's where she spends a good part of the picture. On the surface, this is pure, over-the-top exploitation, and if that's all you're looking for, you'll probably get your money's worth. When producer John Singleton remarks on the DVD that if they'd made the same movie in the South 15 years earlier, they all would've gotten  lynched, he's not entirely kidding. But it works as blues, too, the sexually charged story providing a metaphor for a deeper, painful truth about human relationships. Ricci attacks her role with such ferocity, you wonder whether any other name actress would even attempt such a thing, much less pull it off. Another thing you wonder about is how she keeps her panties so clean, with all the time she spends being dragged, both literally and figuratively, through the dirt. Maybe she did her laundry late at night, when nobody else was looking.

Tragic Ceremony (1972)

TRAGIC CEREMONY  (1972)  ¢ ¢

    D: Riccardo Freda

    Camille Keaton, Tony Isbert, Máximo Valverde

    Giovanni Petrucci, Luciana Paluzzi, Irina Demick

On a dark and stormy night, four people find shelter in a country mansion where a satanic ritual is taking place. Semi-coherent European horror with a few bloody moments and one topless scene, set in the U.K., but obviously not shot there. Camille Keaton would make her mark on exploitation cinema a few years later as the abused and vengeful protagonist in "I Spit On Your Grave".

A Time For Roses (1969)

A TIME FOR ROSES  (1969)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Risto Jarva

    Arto Tuominen, Ritva Vepsä, Tarja Markus,

    Eero Keskitalo, Eila Pahkonen, Matti Lehtela

In a cryptic twist on "Vertigo", a documentary filmmaker becomes obsessed with a woman who's dead and a woman he meets who looks just like her. It's a vision of the 21st century from the late 1960s, well ordered and arty and kind of cold, with mod fashions, reel-to-reel technology and inflatable furniture, which suggests that the future ain't what it used to be, and maybe never was. According to IMDb, it's the first feature-length science-fiction movie made in Finland. In Finnish. In black and white. With subtitles.

Billy Two Hats (1974)

 

BILLY TWO HATS  (1974)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ted Kotcheff

    Gregory Peck, Desi Arnaz Jr., Jack Warden,

    Sian Barbara Allen, David Huddleston, John Pearce

A spare western tale shot in Israel, about a couple of outlaws on the run from a sheriff who pursues them across an apparently endless desert. As the chase goes on and characters pair off in various combinations, the movie becomes a reflection on loyalty, and the subversive notion (in a western, at least) that two people together can be a lot stronger than a man alone. Peck's feisty performance as an old Scottish bandit is a departure from the more stoic western characters he usually portrayed. 

Ted Kotcheff

(1931-2025)

In a Valley of Violence (2016)

 

IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ti West

    Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga,

    James Ransone, Karen Gillan, Tommy Nohilly,

    Toby Huss, Burn Gorman, Larry Fessenden

A stranger rides into a town called Denton, accompanied by his best (and only) friend, a dog. In the saloon, a punk confronts him and challenges him to a fight out in the street, an encounter that does not end well for the punk. It turns out the punk is both the deputy and the son of the town marshall, who tells the stranger to get out of town, which he does. So the stranger's camping out on the range somewhere when the punk and his gang ambush him and throw him off a cliff and kill his dog. They don't check to make sure he's dead, though, which is a mistake, on top of the mistake they made by killing the dog. You can guess the rest. Ethan Hawke plays the stranger. John Travolta plays the marshall. It's a spaghetti western, or a riff on spaghetti westerns, enhanced by West's affection for the genre and a musical score by Jeff Grace that owes a lot to Ennio Morricone. There's a rule in movies like this that the punk should've paid more attention to: No matter how tough you think you are, if you want to be breathing when the end credits roll, you'd better not kill no dog.

World For Ransom (1954)

 

WORLD FOR RANSOM  (1954)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Aldrich

    Dan Duryea, Patric Knowles, Marian Carr,

    Reginald Denny, Gene Lockhart, Nigel Bruce,

    Arthur Shields, Douglass Dumbrille, Keye Luke

Dan Duryea plays a private eye in Singapore, caught up in a plot that involves shady characters, a kidnapped nuclear scientist, British intelligence and (of course) a dame. A Cold War film noir, notable for the direction of Robert Aldrich (uncredited), but not so much for its script. Duryea looks a little haggard, which for this film and this character, kind of makes sense.

Warlock (1959)

 

WARLOCK  (1959)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edward Dmytryk

    Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn,

    Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Tom Drake,

    Wallace Ford, Richard Arlen, DeForest Kelley,

    Regis Toomey, Vaughn Taylor, Whit Bissell

Shifty morals and shifting alliances in a western starring Richard Widmark as an outlaw cowboy-turned-lawman, Henry Fonda as a gunman hired to keep the peace, and Anthony Quinn as a gambler whose main job seems to be watching Fonda's back. Director Edward Dmytryk had been blacklisted, and it's one of those '50s westerns in which the metaphorical implications are up for grabs. If you watch it, see if you don't think there's a little Dean Martin in Quinn's performance. 

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019)

 

JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT  (2019)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Kevin Smith

    Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Harley Quinn Smith,

    Fred Armison, Jason Lee, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck,

    Brian O'Halloran, Kate Micucci, Joey Lauren Adams,

    Tommy Chong, Shannon Elizabeth, Chris Hemsworth, 

    Val Kilmer, Molly Shannon, Lilith Fury, Justin Long,

    Rosario Dawson, Craig Robinson, Jennifer Schwalbach

Jay and Silent Bob recycled, with the boys heading out to Hollywood (again), when somebody decides to make a movie about them (again). Smith takes some well-aimed shots at the movie industry and his place in it, self parody and self-promotion going hand-in-hand. But there are whole episodes, like the one with Fred Armison, that die and don't go anywhere at all. Lots of familiar faces from earlier Smith movies turn up, and fans of the View Askew universe should get a kick out of that. Like a lot of Smith's films, it's all kind of an agreeable mess. Maybe a joint would help. 

Val Kilmer

(1959-2025)