Love and Other Drugs (2010)

 

LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS  (2010)  ¢ ¢

    D: Edward Zwick

    Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt,

    Hank Azaria, Josh Gad, Gabriel Macht,

    Jill Clayburgh, George Segal, Judy Greer

A hustling pharmaceutical salesman finds himself falling for an artist who's battling Parkinson's, when it turns out she has even less interest in emotional commitment than he does. Highlight: Anne Hathaway gets topless for a second or two. Downside: any scene with Josh Gad. Part romantic comedy and part disease-of-the-week melodrama, some if it sentimental and some of it just crass. The actors who play the Parkinson's patients at the convention in Chicago are real. 

Giallo (2009)

 

GIALLO  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Dario Argento

    Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky,

    Valentina Izumi, Robert Miano, Silvia Spross

Leave it to Dario Argento to make a giallo and call it "Giallo". It's a stylish (and bloody) suspense thriller starring Adrien Brody as a police inspector hunting a serial killer who's stalking and cutting up beautiful women. The killer, also played by Brody, is a real ghoul. He might be damaged and deeply disturbed, but you'd still like to see him dead. Brody's low-key performance as the detective anchors the piece and acts as a counterpoint to everything else. Filmed in Turin.

Flashback: "Plan 9 From Outer Space"

 

"One is always considered mad when one perfects 

  something that others cannot grasp."

  Edward D. Wood Jr.

    I remember the first time I saw "Plan 9 From Outer Space". It was 1961 and I was in 8th grade and I remember going into school on a Monday, and all anybody could talk about, at least all the guys, was this movie we'd all seen on Channel 27 on Saturday night: "Grave Robbers From Outer Space". ("Grave Robbers From Outer Space" was the movie's original title.) We were all critics, at least when it came to the kinds of movies that turned up on Channel 27 on Saturday night. And even at 13 or 14, we knew we had viewed something that was both uniquely terrible and unlike anything else. 

    "Plan 9", as millions of former 14-year-olds know, was the creation of Edward D. Wood Jr., a World War Two veteran and cross-dressing auteur whose ambition to make great movies was matched only by his spectacular inability to do that. Wood had completed at least three ultra-low-budget features by the time he started shooting "Plan 9" in November of 1956. He had also befriended Bela Lugosi at a low point in Lugosi's life and career, and had shot a couple minutes of silent footage of Lugosi for a project called "The Vampire's Tomb". When Lugosi died not long after that, Wood decided to incorporate those two minutes into a whole other film that could then be promoted as Bela Lugosi's last movie. Which he did.

    On the surface, at least, the movie's plot has some parallels to "The Day the Earth Stood Still", the Robert Wise sci-fi classic from 1951. Aliens in flying saucers touch down on Earth with a warning that humans are close to developing the solaronite, a bomb that could blow up the universe by igniting the rays of the sun. To prevent this, they have a plan (Plan 9), which involves resurrectiong the dead and unleashing a zombie army to destroy the human race. They start by reviving three recently deceased humans: an old man (the Lugosi character, played for most of the movie by an actor who looks nothing like him), the old man's wife (witchy TV horror star Vampira), and a police inspector (professional wrestler and lumbering giant Tor Johnson). Will Earth survive this deadly threat? Spoiler Alert: The suspense won't kill you.

    For years, ever since the Golden Turkey Awards came out in 1980, the film's status has rested on its reputation as the worst movie ever made. It's not, but you can see how the case could be made. You've got Vampira and Tor Johnson skulking around a graveyard in which the grave markers visibly wobble when the actors walk too close to them. You've got the set for the cockpit of an airplane that's not much more than a few pieces of plywood and a plastic shower curtain. You've got the alien ruler (John "Bunny" Breckinridge) and the spaceship commander (Dudley Manlove) trying to outdo each other in the don't-ask-don't-tell sweepstakes. You've got flying saucers that look like little silver nipples dangling from invisible wires, and pyrotechnics that look like they were produced with matches and lighter fluid. You've got actors like Lyle Talbot and Gregory Walcott, who had long Hollywood careers, struggling to save themselves from Wood's hopelessly overwrought script. And more. And yet . . . 

    "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is never dull. You might watch it wondering how this thing ever got made, but you end up being glad it did. Because what stands out, apart from its colossal unplanned silliness, is its total (and painful) sincerity. Wood absolutely believed he could achieve something close to greatness. It's apparent in every awkward frame. And against prohibitive odds, he got the movie made, and got his cast and crew to go along with it. 

   For a double feature some night, try watching "Plan 9" together with "Ed Wood", Tim Burton's biopic starring Johnny Depp. And if day turns to night and back again at unexpected moments, or Tor Johnson almost falls back into the grave he's supposed to be climbing out of, try not to be too critical. 

    As Depp says, playing Wood in the Tim Burton movie, "Cut! Perfect! Print it!" Ed couldn't have said it any better himself.

Slattery's Hurricane (1949)

SLATTERY'S HURRICANE  (1949)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Andre De Toth

    Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, Veronica Lake, 

    John Russell, Gary Merrill, Walter Kingsford

Richard Widmark plays an ex-Navy pilot who flies into the eye of a hurricane in an apparent attempt to rise above an otherwise earthbound plot. Linda Darnell and Veronica Lake play the women in  his life, and John Russell, looking like a stand-in for Randolph Scott, plays an old buddy from the war. The airplane-against-the-storm stuff is okay, but the movie spends way too much time on the ground.

Juror #2 (2024)

 

JUROR #2  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Clint Eastwood

    Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons,

    Chris Messina, Zoey Deutch, Cedric Yarbrough

    Amy Aquino, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb

Clint Eastwood's latest (and possibly last) movie is a riff on "12 Angry Men", about a murder trial, an ambitious prosecuting attorney, a defendant who seems guilty but might not be, and a  juror (Juror #2) who knows more about the case than he should. I'm not sure it all adds up, but it's an effective piece of cinematic storytelling, a reflection on the imperfect nature of justice, and the scenes in the jury room, for anybody who's ever sat on a jury, are right on the mark. Clint fans will note that some key flashback scenes take place in and around a roadhouse - a signature Eastwood location - and that the place is called Rowdy's Hideaway. A coincidence? Probably not. 

Way For a Sailor (1930)

 

WAY FOR A SAILOR  (1930)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Sam Wood

    John Gilbert, Wallace Beery, Leila Hyams,

    Jim Tully, Polly Moran, Doris Lloyd

A broadly played, early sound comedy starring John Gilbert and Wallace Beery as merchant seamen on shore leave. Various factors contributed to the collapse of Gilbert's career in the 1930s. His voice, his alcoholism and the wrath of Louis B. Mayer were all part of it, and so were movies like this. He made a couple of decent talkies, but "Way For a Sailor" wasn't one of them. The boys shoulda stayed on the boat. 

Hard Luck (1921)

 

HARD LUCK  (1921)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline

    Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Joe Roberts

Buster Keaton spends the first few minutes of this two-reeler trying to commit suicide.  Then other stuff happens. The gags involve a fish, a bear and a horse.

Lake Michigan Monster (2018)

 

LAKE MICHIGAN MONSTER  (2018)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

    Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Beulah Peters,

    Erick West, Daniel Long, Wayne Tews

A crackpot comedy, shot cheaply (in Milwaukee and Muskegon), about a sea captain obsessed with hunting and killing a monster lurking offshore in Lake Michigan. It's the kind of thing the Marx Brothers and Monty Python excelled at, but pure zaniness can be hard to pull off. I watched it with a receptive crowd at Seattle's Grand Illusion, and beyond about the half-way point, the laughter really died away. (It loses something when the captain's "band of rowdy cutthroats" leave the scene and the captain takes over the story.) It's in black and white, and there are some imaginative, low-grade effects. 

His Majesty O'Keefe (1954)

 

HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Byron Haskin

    Burt Lancaster, Joan Rice, André Morell,

    Benson Fong, Abraham Sofaer, Archie Savage,

    Philip Ahn, Charles Horvath, Tessa Prendergast

Cast adrift by a mutinous crew, a dashing sea captain washes up on a tropical island and immediately sees that there's a fortune to be made in coconut oil. Now all he has to do is secure some financing, find a boat and a crew, and coax the islanders into harvesting their coconuts. A colorful South Seas adventure, more leisurely than Lancaster's other swashbucklers, but still a passable showcase for Burt's distinctive brand of derring-do. If the '20s had Douglas Fairbanks, and the '30s and '40s had Errol Flynn, the '50s most emphatically had Burt Lancaster. 

Bikini Bloodbath (2006)

 

BIKINI BLOODBATH  (2006)  ¢

    D: Jonathan Gorman, Thomas Edward Seymour

    Debbie Rochon, Leah Ford, Robert Cosgrove,

    Sheri Bomb, Katie Gil, Anna-Karin Eskilsson,

    Natasha Nielsen, Olja Hrustic, Russ Russo,

    Dana Fay Ensalata, Margaret Rose Champagne

An empty-headed slasher flick about a bunch of bikini girls being stalked and chopped up by a killer wielding a meat cleaver and wearing a chef's hat. This movie tests the notion that there's any limit at all to how dumb 72 minutes of video footage can be. References to "Citizen Kane" and "Dazed and Confused" notwithstanding, the evidence suggests that there's not. 

The Accountant (2016)

 

THE ACCOUNTANT  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gavin O'Connor

    Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons,

    Jon Bernthal, Jean Smart, Cynthia Addai-Robinson,

    Jeffrey Tambor, Allison Wright, John Lithgow

A good, tricky thriller in which Ben Affleck plays a guy on the spectrum with two extraordinary skills: crunching numbers and killing people. That has  made him a lot of money, but his sense of perfection and obsession with leaving no mission incomplete have consequences. Ben and Anna Kendrick are the stars, but the standouts are J.K. Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson as the federal agents working the case. A sequel was released in 2025.

Gideon's Daughter (2005)

 

GIDEON'S DAUGHTER  (2005)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Stephen Poliakov

    Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Emily Blunt,

    Robert Lindsay, David Westhead, Tom Hardy,

    Ronni Ancona, Samantha Whittaker, Joanna Page

Bill Nighy plays a public relations guru estranged from his college-bound daughter. Miranda Richardson plays a convenience-store clerk whose son has died in a bicycle accident. They're an odd couple, but they hit it off in a low-key character study produced by the BBC. The death of Princess Diana and the lead-up to the new millennium provide historical context and subplots. Emily Blunt plays Nighy's daughter. 

Project Moon Base (1953)

 

PROJECT MOON BASE  (1953)  ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Talmadge

    Donna Martell, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, 

    Hayden Rorke, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison

Astronauts on a mission to take pictures in the lead-up to a moon landing are forced to land on the moon themselves when something goes wrong. Unexciting Cold War sci-fi with the accent on low-budget technology more than high-concept storytelling. (For a movie released more than 15 years before the actual event, the lunar landing vehicle looks a lot like the real thing.) Robert Heinlein wrote the script, and the sporty shorts and helmets the astronauts wear are cute. 

Battle Circus (1953)

 

BATTLE CIRCUS  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Richard Brooks

    Humphrey Bogart, June Allyson, Keenan Wynn,

    Robert Keith, William Campbell, Philip Ahn,

    Patricia Tiernan, Adele Longmire, Steve Forrest

Major Humphrey Bogart and Lieutenant June Allyson find they're falling for each other while patching up the wounded in Korea. The love story's formulaic, but there's some tension in  the battle scenes. The makers of "M*A*S*H" took a few cues from this. 

Meteor (1979)

 

METEOR  (1979)  ¢ ¢

    D: Ronald Neame

    Sean Connery, Karl Malden, Natalie Wood,

    Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Joseph Campanella,

    Henry Fonda, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart

A space rock five miles wide is hurtling toward Earth at 30,000 miles an hour, and could cause a new ice age if it hits us. The Yanks and the Russkies have the weapons out there to save the planet, but only if they combine forces and sync their systems to blow the thing out of the sky. A '70s disaster thriller from American International, with the mandatory all-star cast and some cheesy-looking special effects. Favorite bad-movie bit: Toward the end, the main players and a couple dozen other rocket scientists are making their way through an old subway tunnel under the Hudson River when the walls give way the the river floods in. They emerge completely covered in mud, except for two hookers who look like they're just getting ready to go to work. Henry Fonda, who's not down there in the subway tunnel, plays "The President." 

Made In England (2024)

 

MADE IN ENGLAND  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: David Hinton

Martin Scorsese plays tour guide on a journey through the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who teamed up in the 1940s on a series of movies that combined a groundbreaking use of Technicolor with undercurrents of mysticism. Clips from "A Matter of Life and Death", "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes", intercut with shots from "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull", show the direct influence the Powell & Pressburger films had on Scorsese, who first started watching them as a kid on a black-and-white TV. He's been watching them ever since. 

Telefon (1977)

 

TELEFON  (1977)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Don Siegel

    Charles Bronson, Lee Remick, Donald Pleasance

    Tyne Daly, Alan Badel, Patrick Magee, Sheree North,

    Frank Marth, Helen Page Camp, Iggie Wolfington

Passable pulp spy stuff with Charles Bronson as a Russian agent dispatched to the States to stop a rogue KBG official from starting World War Three. The credibility quotient is not high, but Don Siegel brings it off with his usual efficiency, and Tyne Daly steals a scene or two as a computer analyst with the CIA. Stirling Siliphant worked on the script. 

The Crime Is Mine (2023)

 

THE CRIME IS MINE  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: François Ozon

    Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Rebecca Marder, Isabelle Huppert,

    Fabric Luchini, Dany Boon, André Dussollier

When a starving actress is accused of murder, her flatmate, an equally hungry lawyer, defends her in court. Which is just the beginning of this screwball comedy, a period social satire with a distinctly feminist edge. It can't quite sustain the pace it starts out with, but the actors pull you along. If you aren't completely fluent in French, be ready to read subtitles real fast. 

Screen Test / Take 22

 Match the  following music performers 

with the movies they acted in:

                                         1. Mick Jagger

                                         2. Elvis Presley

                                         3. Joan Jett

                                         4. Art Garfunkel

                                         5. k.d. lang

                                         6. Bob Dylan

                                         7. Marianne Faithfull

                                         8. David Bowie

                                         9. Madonna

                                       10. Ringo Starr

                              a. "Light of Day"

                              b. "The Magic Christian"

                              c. "The Man Who Fell to Earth"

                              d. "Ned Kelly"

                              e. "Shanghai Surprise"

                              f.  "Carnal Knowledge"

                              g. "The Girl On the Motorcycle"

                              h. "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid"

                              i.  "Salmonberries"

                              j.  "Flaming Star"

ANDSWERS:

1-d / 2-j / 3-a / 4-f / 5-i / 6-h / 7-g / 8-c / 9-e / 10-b

Into the Mud (2016)

 

INTO THE MUD  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Pablo Pastor

    Maris Forqué, Ramón G. del Pomer

A woman wakes up on the edge of a forest, naked and covered in dirt. She slips away into the trees and a hunter with a rifle goes after her. She lures him into a pond and there's a surprise. 

Frankenstein (1952)

 

FRANKENSTEIN  (1952)  ¢ ¢

    D: Don Medford

    John Newland, Lon Chaney, Mary Alice Moore,

    Peggy Allenby, Raymond Bramley, Farrell Pelly

A rarely screened, half-hour, kinescope version of the classic horror tale, shot fast and cheap and performed live for the "Tales of Tomorrow" television series. Guess who plays the Monster?

Incident By a Bank (2010)

 

INCIDENT BY A BANK  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ruben Östlund

    Bahador Foladi, Ramtin Parvaneh, Leif Edlund,

    Rasmus Lindgren, Henrik Vikman, Per Olaf Albrektsson

A movie about a failed bank robbery, done in a single 12-minute take (shot outside the bank) and apparently based on an actual incident. It plays like a documentary. The action looks real. The choreography is neatly worked out. 

Wolfs (2024)

 

WOLFS  (2024)  ¢ ¢

    D: Jon Watts

    George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams

Clooney and Pitt play rival cleanup men called in to make a dead body in a luxury hotel suite disappear. It gets more complicated than that, but not in a way that's ever very interesting. Brad and George trade wisecracks throughout, but they don't look like they're enjoying it all that much, and everything about the movie feels old and tired, from the derivative "Pulp Fiction" setup to the recycled "Butch Cassidy" conclusion. Visually, there's an awful lot of darkness. The musical score's not bad. 

Strongroom (1962)

 

STRONGROOM  (1962)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Vernon Sewell

    Derren Nesbitt, Colin Gordon, Ann Lynn,

    Keith Faulkner, William Morgan Sheppard

Three bank robbers pull off a heist and make their getaway, leaving two people - the bank's manager and his secretary - locked in the vault. They're home free, till they realize it's a holiday weekend, the vault is airtight, and by the time the bank opens on Tuesday morning, those two people will be dead. Not wanting to add murder to their rap sheet, they decide to break back into the bank before it's too late. Implausible, to be sure, but a nifty, little, low-budget thriller starring nobody you've ever heard of, except maybe Derren Nesbitt, who would later play the arrogant Gestapo officer in "Where Eagles Dare". The final closeup shot is both comical and - for the bank robbers - devastating.

Stranger On the Run (1967)

 

STRANGER ON THE RUN  (1967)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Don Siegel

    Henry Fonda, Anne Baxter, Michael Parks,

    Dan Duryea, Sal Mineo, Lloyd Bochner,

    Michael Burns, Tom Reese, Bernie Hamilton,

    Walter Burke, Madlyn Rhue, Zalman King

A bum played by Henry Fonda gets thrown out of a boxcar in a dusty western town, does a little work in exchange for a shot of whiskey, and starts looking for a woman nobody seems to want to talk about. When the woman turns up murdered, the bum becomes a suspect, on the run from some railroad vigilantes who want to hang him. Dan Duryea has a good late-career role as an old gunman who functions as the posse's conscience, but there's some uncertainty in the script, especially with the Michael Parks character, a lawman whose values and motives are never entirely clear. He mumbles a lot, too. The ending could've gone in two very different directions. See if you think the filmmakers chose the right one. Made for TV. 

The Teachers' Lounge (2023)

THE TEACHERS' LOUNGE  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Ilker Çatak

    Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Eva Löbau

    Rafael Stachowiak, Michael Klammer, Leonard Stettnisch,

    Can Rodenbostel, Vincent Stachowiak, Padmé Hamdemir,

    Elsa Krieger, Kathrin Wehlisch, Kersten Reimann

In a middle school somewhere in Germany, a theft has occurred, and compelling evidence suggests who's responsible. A first-year teacher gets caught up in the investigation, but the more she tries to do what's right, the more she's vilified by everybody else. A contender for the Oscar for best foreign feature - it lost to "The Zone of Interest" - with a strong central performance by Leonie Benesch as a compassionate idealist trapped in a claustrophobic nightmare in a movie that never leaves the school.

Fan Dance (1942)

FAN DANCE  (1942)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: [?]

Legendary stripper Sally Rand performs her most famous routine in a Soundies short. The effect is more elegant than revealing. Memorably recreated in Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff" (1983), with Peggy Davis twirling the fans. 

Megalopolis (2024)

 

MEGALOPOLIS  (2024)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Francis Ford Coppola 

    Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel,

    Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Talia Shire,

    Jason Schwartzman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney,

    Chloe Fineman, Balthazar Getty, Dustin Hoffman

Francis Ford Coppola's grandiose hallucination about fashion, architecture, politics, love, time, greed, arrogance, power and just about everything else is a monument to epic ambition and narrative incoherence. Five minutes in, I was hopelessly lost, and nothing happened in the next two hours to change that. My colleague Ms. Applebaum thought drugs might help. I'm not sure about that. 

Ziegfeld Girl (1941)

 

ZIEGFELD GIRL  (1941)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Z. Leonard

    James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr,

    Lana Turner, Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper, 

    Edward Everett Horton, Charles Winninger,

    Ian Hunter, Philip Dorn, Paul Kelly, Eve Arden,

    Dan Dailey, Felix Bressart, Fay Holden, Al Sheen

Three young women break into the Ziegfeld Follies. Romance and melodrama follow. Busby Berkeley staged the production numbers, but the pre-Code stuff he did back in the early '30s was more fun. Judy singing "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" is a highlight. The costumes are over-the-top. 

Raggedy Man (1981)

 

RAGGEDY MAN  (1981)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jack Fisk

    Sissy Spacek, Eric Roberts, Sam Shepard,

    William Sanderson, Tracey Walter, R.G. Armstrong,

    Henry Thomas, Carey Hollis Jr., Bill Thurman

There's a lot of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in this movie, which stars Sissy Spacek as a small-town telephone operator in World War Two Texas, stuck in a job she longs to escape and doing her best to raise two active young boys. There's a Boo Radley character, the scarred, mysterious "raggedy man," keeping a watchful eye on the woman and her kids and pushing a lawn mower around. There's a fleeting shot at romance with a sailor (Eric Roberts) that doesn't last long, and a threat in the form of two menacing cretins played by Tracey Walter and William Sanderson. Director Jack Fisk (Spacek's husband) has worked mostly as a production designer and knows how to make a period piece look good. Jerry Goldsmith composed the music, and if you remember Elmer Bernstein's score for "To Kill a Mockingbird", that'll feel just right, too.

Philo Vance Returns (1947)

PHILO VANCE RETURNS  (1947)  ¢ 1/2

    D: William Beaudine 

    William Wright, Vivian Austin, Leon Belasco,

    Clara Glandick, Damian O'Flynn, Iris Adrian

When the ex-wives of a wealthy playboy start turning up dead (along with the playboy himself), it's up to Philo Vance to crack the case before everybody lands in the morgue. A poverty-row whodunit with a solution  you could probably figure out on your own without the help of a B-movie private eye. William Powell had played Vance a few times in the early sound era, but this is a long way from those films, and Wright is a long way from William Powell. 

On the Rocks (2020)

 

ON THE ROCKS  (2020)  ¢ ¢

    D: Sofia Coppola

    Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans,

    Jessica Henwick, Jenny Slate, Barbara Bain

With Woody Allen's career tailing off at this point, I guess somebody has to make movies about the kinds of people who can still afford to live in Manhattan. So here's Sofia Coppola with a story about a 39-year-old writer and mother of two (Rashida Jones) who, aided and abetted by her meddling father (Bill Murray), starts to suspect her husband is having an affair. The affluent have their problems, too, it seems, and they're not any better at solving them than the rest of us. Murray and Jones are both good, but the setup feels flimsy, and Murray's casual misanthropy has an unpleasant edge. 

Platinum Blonde (1931)

PLATINUM BLONDE  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Frank Capra

    Jean Harlow, Loretta Young, Robert Williams,

    Halliwell Hobbes, Reginald Owen, Edmund Breese

    Walter Catlett, Claud Allister, Louise Closser Hale

A newspaper reporter played by Robert Williams marries a society dame, which only confirms what he already knew: He doesn't like wearing garters or living in a gilded cage. Jean Harlow plays the rich girl (the "platinum blonde"). Loretta Young plays a fellow reporter the newsman didn't realize he was crazy about all along. Frank Capra keeps things moving, and there's some pre-Code wit in the script. Young and Harlow are the names everybody's heard of, but the real standout is Williams, who has the nonchalant manner of Bing Crosby and an easy way with a line that makes you wonder what he might've done if he hadn't died of peritonitis four days after the picture's release. 

Women Behind Bars (1974)

WOMEN BEHIND BARS  (1974)  ¢

    D: Rick Deconnink (Jess Franco)

    Lina Romay, Martine Steed, Roger Darton,

    Ronald Weiss, Nathalie Chape, Clifford Brown

A woman goes to prison for shooting her boyfriend, and there's some junk plot about a diamond heist. There's a lesbian enounter and a girl being whipped and a bitch matron and a lot of tough talk, because these women won't take shit from nobody. The sex scenes look like bad '70s porn, which they are, and the nudity is the definition of gratuitous. Jess Franco strikes again. 

Quote File / Take 28

 

"I'm gonna puke. No one eats alpacas."

  Madeleine Arthur in "Color Out of Space"

"I'm free. And all it took was a bullet to the head."  

  Sophie Thatcher in "Companion"

"I'm a cat, man, but, like, I don't have nine lives."

  Chuck Berry in "Go, Johnny, Go"

"I'll count to eight, and if you haven't smiled, 

  I'll strangle you."

  Jean-Paul Belmondo to Jean Seberg in "Breathless"

"I don't know where I'm goin', but I can't wait 

  to get there."

  Kristi McNichol in "Two Moon Junction"

"I've always dreamt of meeting a cockroach 

  breeder."

  Eva Green in "Womb"

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

 

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS  (1950)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Otto Preminger

    Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill,

    Bert Freed, Tom Tully, Karl Malden,

    Ruth Donnelly, Craig Stevens, Neville Brand

A cop who has a habit of beating up suspects accidentally kills one and tries to pin the rap on the gangster. What could go wrong? As it turns out, just about everything. Dana Andrews plays the cop, who's like a prototype of Dirty Harry, but without a sense of humor. Eddie Muller, who knows all about this stuff, says nobody ever pulled off wearing a fedora better than Dana Andrews. 

Thelma (2024)

 

THELMA  (2024)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Josh Margolin

    June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree,

    Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell

When an old woman named Thelma loses $10,000 in a telephone scam, her family starts to think about moving her to a different level of care. Thelma, faced with the everyday issues of aging, has a different idea, and takes off on a mission to track down the scammers and get her money back. On the plausibility scale, this lands somewhere between highly unlikely and no way in hell, and while it's nicely cast and acted, it's way too cute. The French movie "Driving Madeleine" covered similar material with more subtlety and restraint. Richard Roundtree's last film. 

News of the World (2020)

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD  (2020)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Paul Greengrass

    Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Elizabeth Marvel,

    Mare Winingham, Ray McKinnon, Fred Hechinger,

    Michael Angelo Covino, Thomas Francis Murphy

As much as anything, "News of the World" is a movie about stories. Tom Hanks plays Captain Thomas Jefferson Kidd (yes, Captain Kidd), a Civil War veteran traveling from town to town in 1870 Texas, reading stories out of newspapers to folks who presumably don't have access to CNN or NPR. Out on the trail one day, he comes across a young girl (Helena  Zengel), who's just spent six years living with the Kiowa, after a raid that killed her family. Now an Army raid has killed her Kiowa family, and the kid is lost. And wild. Unable to find anybody who will take her in, the newsman reluctantly embarks on a 400-mile journey to her only remaining relatives, an aunt and uncle who live down toward San Antonio. It's a perilous adventure, and there's an old-fashioned, storybook feel to the way it plays out. The captain turns out to be just as damaged and haunted as the girl is, and a brief exchange along the way is revealing: He tells her (in English) that the only way to face the future is to forget the past. She replies (in Kiowa) that the only way to move on is to remember it. Hanks is good - you expect that - and Zengel doesn't miss a step keeping up with him. Their evolving relationship and the way they play off each other are the heart and soul of the movie. It's an odyssey, really, and a reminder that western stories aren't just our national myth. They're our national fairy tale. 

Grateful Dead (1995)

 

GRATEFUL DEAD  (1995)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Paul McCartney

Linda McCartney's black-and-white photos of the Dead in the '60s, with "Anthem of the Sun" on the soundtrack.

All Is Full of Love (1999)

 

ALL IS FULL OF LOVE  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Chris Cunningham 

    Björk

Love among the androids, with music by Björk.

Melodies Old and New (1942)

 

MELODIES OLD AND NEW  (1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Edward L. Cahn

    George "Spanky" McFarland, Billy "Froggy" Laughlin,

    Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, Walter Wills, Robert Blake

The Our Gang kids put on a show.

Pharaoh's Curse (1957)

 

PHARAOH'S CURSE  (1957)  ¢ ¢

    D: Lee Sholem

    Mark Dana, Ziva Rodann, Diane Brewster

    Ben Wright, Guy Prescott, George N. Neise

In 1902, a small team of Brits head out into the Valley of Kings, where an obsessed archeologist is about to desecrate an ancient tomb. How could something like that be a bad idea? According to IMDb, Lee Sholem was hired to direct because he had a reputation for shooting cheap and quick.(His nickname was "Roll 'Em Sholem".) The movie was shot in six days. The exteriors, filmed in Death Valley, were done in one.

Persecution (2009)

 

PERSECUTION  (2009)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Patrice Chéreau

    Romain Duris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, 

    Jean-Huges Anglade, Michel Duchaussoy,

    Gilles Cohen, Alex Descas, Hiam Abbass 

A gloomy, antisocial guy who remodels apartments and volunteers in a retirement home mopes around Paris with others who are equally sad and screwed up. The only exception is his girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and even she admits she likes him better when they're apart. So it's kind of a downer, but it's not the worst French movie in which unhappy characters brood and smoke cigarettes. I don't know what movie that would be, and I hope I never find out.

M*A*S*H (1970)

M*A*S*H  (1970)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Robert Altman

    Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt,

    Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen,

    Rene Auberjonois, Gary Burghoff, Jo Ann Pflug,

    John Shuck, Bud Cort, Michael Murphy, G. Wood,

    Carl Gottlieb, Dawne Damon, David Arkin

. . . Did Hawkeye steal that Jeep? . . . Captain Pierce and me have been boozing all day and . . . Don't you guys use olives? . . . I got a book here. It's got a lot of pictures in it . . . No food! Sex! I want sex! Give me some sex! . . . I'm Dr. Jekyll, actually, and this is my friend, Mr. Hyde . . . It worked for Hitler and Eva Braun . . . Is this The Bickersons? I love them . . . I'll bet she's not a real blonde . . . Major Burns will be out of your tent in 24 hours . . . All right, bub, your fucking head's coming right off . . . This isn't a hospital! It's an insane asylum! . . . We have got to share this with the rest of the camp . . . If I nail Hot Lips and hit Hawkeye, can I go home? . . . Bastard, 88, called me a coon . . . Anybody know if this is an officer or an enlisted man? . . . He's an enlisted man . . . Make the stitches big . . . Goddamn Army . . . 

Robert Duvall

(1931-2026)

Bud Cort

(1948-2026)

All Hat (2007)

 

ALL HAT  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Leonard Farlinger

    Luke Kirby, Keith Carradine, Carmine Cangialosi,

    Lisa Ray, Rachael Leigh Cook, David Alpay,

    Ernie Hudson, Gary Farmer, Graham Greene

Struggling farmers try to hold off greedy developers, and there's a horse race. Bill Frisell's music weaves in and out on the soundtrack, and Keith Carradine strums a guitar, downs a shot, takes a gun off the bad guy and once again makes movie acting look easy. 

American Fiction (2023)

 

AMERICAN FICTION  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Cord Jefferson

    Jeffrey Wright, Leslie Uggams, Sterling K. Brown,

    Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz,

    Issa Rae, Keith David, Myra Lucretia Taylor

A variation on Spike Lee's "Bamboozled", with the story centered around book publishing rather than television. Jeffrey Wright plays a novelist whose books are admired by critics but ignored by readers. Faced with mounting financial obligations and appalled by what passes for "black" literature on the bestseller lists, he dashes off a scurrilous piece of junk and passes the manuscript on to his dubious agent. In no time at all, a publisher has picked it up with a $750,000 advance, movie deals worth millions are in the works, and life has become infinitely more complicated. A brilliant first feature from writer/director Cord Jefferson. If you've seen "Bamboozled", you'll know the track it's on. The satire hits  home - in your face and all the way to your funny bone.

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

 

EVIL UNDER THE SUN  (1982)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Guy Hamilton

    Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Jane Birkin,

    Roddy McDowall, Diana Rigg, James Mason,

    Denis Quilley, Colin Blakely, Nicholas Clay

Belgian (not French) detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) finds himself on a small island in the Adriatic where the center of activity is a luxury hotel run by Maggie Smith. There are other affluent guests, and it takes about half the movie before one of them gets bumped off and Poirot can put his sleuthing skills to work. A murder mystery that gets by on its cast and locations as much as its whodunit plot. The music is Cole Porter, and Ustinov mangles English and French with equal abandon. Other standouts among the suspects: Roddy McDowall as a flaming gossip writer, and Smith and Diana Rigg as old theater colleagues who don't much like each other. Filmed in Majorca.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

 

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (2024) ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Gil Kenan

    McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Kumail Nanjiani,

    Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Patton Oswalt, Logan Kim,

    Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts,

    Emily Ann Lind, James Acaster, William Atherton

Recycled ectoplasm.

Black Tuesday (1954)

 

BLACK TUESDAY  (1954)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Hugo Fregonese

    Edward G. Robinson, Peter Graves, Jean Parker,

    Milburn Stone, Sylvia Findley, Jack Kelly

Edward G. Robinson at his most vicious plays a gangster who breaks out of prison on the day he's scheduled to die in the electric chair. Peter Graves plays a fellow con who has some stolen loot stashed away, and Robinson wants that money real bad. Some of this plays like "Key Largo", with Robinson snarling abuse at a handful of hostages as the cops close in. Robinson's career was on the margins at the time, after his run-ins with the HUAC committee. Pacing his prison cell, he's literally a caged animal. It's an angry, haunted performance. 

4:44 Last Day On Earth (2011)

 

4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH  (2011)  ¢ ¢

    D: Abel Ferrara

    Willem Dafoe, Shanyn Leigh, Natasha Lyonne,

    Trung Nguyen, Pat Kiernan, Anita Pallenberg 

Two people sharing a Manhattan loft wait for the end of the world. One's an artist, one's a recovering junkie, and the end is not far off. Al Gore makes a televised appearance, which makes you wonder: Why didn't we listen to Al Gore when it still would've made a difference? 

Beau Is Afraid (2023)

 

BEAU IS AFRAID  (2023)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ari Aster

    Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuP0ne, Amy Ryan,

    Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Kylie Rogers,

    Bill Hader, Stephen McKinley Henderson

Beau is also deeply fucked-up and racked with a truckload of crippling guilt. Beau is in a nightmare he can't escape, because the nightmare is his life. Beau is played by Joaquin Phoenix in an ambitious, surreal psychodrama that might be more compelling if it had a running time shorter than 179 minutes. The pure nightmare stuff is the best. (The first couple of reels are truly frightening.) It loses something the more it tries to explain itself. And then there's Beau's mother. And the monster in the attic. (Don't ask.) Psych majors will want to take a look.

Gold of the Amazon Women (1979)

 

GOLD OF THE AMAZON WOMEN  (1979)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Mark L. Lester

    Bo Svenson, Anita Ekberg, Donald Pleasance,

    Richard Romanus, Robert Minor, Maggie Jean Smith,

    Bond Gideon, Susan Miller, Sarita Butterfield

A square-jawed explorer played by Bo Svenson goes into the jungle looking for the Seven Cities of Gold, but an evil drug lord played by Donald Pleasance wants the gold for himself, and (of course) there's a tribe of Amazons. A sluggishly paced, low-cost adventure made in Trinidad for NBC television. Nothing to write home about, or to go into the jungle for, either. Anita Ekberg, defining the concept of statuesque, plays the queen of the Amazons. 

The 2025 Covie Awards

The Covie Awards are as bogus as climate change is real. They were created during the pandemic to recognize cinematic achievement in an ever-shifting variety of categories. If there were actual awards to hand out, and anybody cared who they got handed out to, the Movie Buzzard would recognize the following:

Picture: "Eddington" (2025)

Actress: Fernanda Torres in "I'm Still Here" (2024)

Actor: Jesse Plemmons in "Begonia" (2025)

Supporting Actress: Shirley Henderson in "I Really Hate My Job" (2007)

Supporting Actor: Bob Burrus in "Tully" (2003)

Cameo: Hugh Grant in "Glass Onion" (2022)

Ensemble: "Paris" (2008)

Couple: Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in "American Ultra" (2015)

Juvenile Performance: Giulia Salerno in "Misunderstood" (2014)

Revival: "Dogma" (1999)

Foreign Language Film: "Nouvelle Vague" (2025)

Documentary: "The American Revolution" (2025)

Short Film: "Return To Glennascaul" (1952)

Director: Ryan Coogler, "Sinners" (2025)

Cinematography: David Chambille, "Nouvelle Vague" (2025)

Musical Score: Mica Levy, "The Zone of Interest" (2024)

Production Design: "Frankenstein" (2025)

Best Villain: Juliette Lewis in "The Thicket" (2024)

Best Mad Scene: Sally Hawkins in "Bring Her Back" (2025)

Better With Age: Jenny Agutter in "Sometimes Always Never" (2018)

Final Bow: Jane Birkin in "Jane By Charlotte" (2021)

Title Sequence: "American Ultra" (2015)

Poster Art: "The Astounding She-Monster" (1957)

Sound: "Overlord" (1975)

Why Closeups Were Invented: Tilda Swinton in "The Room Next Door" (2024)

Best Performance By an Actress Playing Herself: Robin Wright in "The Congress" (2013)

Best Performance By an Actress With a Shaved Head: Emma Stone in "Bugonia" (2025)

Best Charlton Heston Performance By an Actor Who's Not Charlton Heston: Barry Sullivan in "Planet of the Vampires" (1965)

Chewing the Scenery: Charles Laughton in "Devil and the Deep" (1932)

Maynard G. Krebs Award For Beatnik Slang: The cats at the club in "The Love Statue" (1965)

Most Eye-Catching Nude Scene: Julianne Nicholson in "Flannel Pajamas" (2006)

Most Discreet Nude Scene: Claudette Colbert in "Four Frightened People" (1934)

Least Inhibited Nude Couple: Raquel Karro and Rodrigo Bolzan in "Pendular" (2017)

How To Stuff a Wild Bikini: "Raquel Welch in "Fathom" (1967)

Most Evil Juvenile Performance: Earl Rhodes in "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea" (1976)

American Tobacco Institute Award For Achievement In Smoking: Adrien Brody in "The Brutalist"(2024)

Speed Racing: "Grand Prix" (1966)

Gender Bent: "Jacky In the Kingdom of Women" (2014)

Dead Birds and Time Loops: "Triangle" (2009)

Stuck: Zeb Haradon and Robin Ballard in "Elevator Movie" (2004)

Missing a Few Teeth: Chris Cooper in "Adaptation" (2002)

Lying Down On the Job: Sandra Bernhard in "The Third Date" (2003)

Over the Top and Around the Bend: Amy Madigan in "Weapons" (2025)

Still Crazy After All These Years: Bill Lee in "Spaceman" (2006)

Best Movie To Watch Stoned (Maybe): "Else" (2024)

Hundreds of Pies: "The Battle of the Century" (1927)

There Goes Chicago: "A House of Dynamite" (2025)

All Thumbs: Uma Thurman in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (1993)

Best Pole-Dancing: Olivia Graves in "Hundreds of Beavers" (2022)

Wickedest Lipstick: Jessica Chastain in "Salomé" (2013)

Best Name For an Actress In a Low-Budget Nudie Flick: Tiffany Tickles in "I Was a Teenage Strangler" (1997)

Weirdest Nicolas Cage Movie: "Color Out of Space" (2019)

Mind the Age Gap: Joan Crawford and Ty Hardin in "Berserk" (1967)

Shoot the Dog: "What Just Happened" (2008)

Herman Scobie Award For Career Achievement: 

John Waters