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.