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.