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?

Is Anybody There? (2008)

 

IS ANYBODY THERE?  (2008)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Crowley

    Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff,

    David Morrissey, Peter Vaughan, Leslie Phillips,

    Sylvia Sims, Linzey Cocker, Rosemary Harris

An old magician (Michael Caine) moves into a retirement home where he befriends the 12-year-old son of the couple who run the place. The magician is losing his memory. The boy is obsessed with ghosts. The old man knows he's fading and he's fighting it off, looking back on a life filled with love and regret. The kid knows more about death than most 12-year-olds, and wants to know what comes next. The movie leans toward sweetness at times, and if Caine's cantankerous performance doesn't entirely offset that, he at last makes you not mind too much. 

Going Hollywood (1933)

 

GOING HOLLYWOOD  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Raoul Walsh

    Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay,

    Stuart Erwin, Ned Sparks, Patsy Kelly

William Randolph Hearst's girlfriend plays a French teacher who quits her job and follows a radio crooner to Hollywood where he's scheduled to make a movie. Bing sings "Temptation", the title tune and a few other things, Marion gets a musical number or two, and Patsy Kelly makes the most of her first feature film role as Marion's Hollywood pal. Surprise highlight: a group called the Radio Rogues, whose vocal impressions include Kate Smith and Crosby rivals Russ Columbo and Rudy Vallee.

Lucky Luke (2009)

 

LUCKY LUKE  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: James Huth

    Jean Dujardin, Sylvie Testud, Melvil Poupaud,

    Michaël Youn, Alexandra Lamy, Daniel Prévost

The president of the United States, facing a tough reelection campaign, dispatches a gunman named Lucky Luke to clean up a place called Daisy Town, where he plans to sink the last spike in the Transcontinental Railroad. An absurdist French spoof on westerns, both spaghetti and traditional, based on a comic book. It plays like a cartoon, sometimes funny, sometimes silly, and usually both at once. (There's even a talking horse.) Calamity Jane, Jesse James and Billy the Kid all show up. They bring their guns. 

The Last Vampyre (1993)

THE LAST VAMPYRE  (1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Tim Sullivan 

    Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke, Roy Marsden,

    Keith Barron, Yolanda Vazquez, Maurice Denham,

    Richard Dempsey, Juliet Aubrey, Jason Hetherington

Sherlock Holmes investigates some mysterious deaths that the local townspeople believe to be the work of a vampire. They think they know who the vampire is, too, but Holmes suspects they're wrong and seeks a more rational solution. Most vampire movies, you know who the vampire is and you're just watching and wondering how many necks he'll bite before he steps out into the sun or gets a wooden stake through the heart. This one's a mystery and keeps you guessing. Jeremy Brett makes a stuffy Sherlock - he played the role on British television for about ten years - and Roy Marsden as the alleged vampire resembles Richard E. Grant just enough to make you wonder what Grant could do as Dracula.