Paperback Hero (1999)

 

PAPERBACK HERO  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Anthony J. Bowman

    Claudia Karvan, Hugh Jackman, Angie Milliken,

    Andrew S. Gilbert, Jeanie Drynan, Barry Rugless

A truck driver writes a romance novel and gets it published under the name of a woman who knows nothing about what he's up to. When the book takes off and the publishers want the author to start doing publicity, things get complicated. A good-natured, off-road comedy from Down Under. Hugh Jackman's first theatrical film.

Raiders of the Lost Shark (2015)

 

RAIDERS OF THE LOST SHARK  (2015)   ¢ ¢

    D: Brett Kelly

    Candice Lidstone, Jessica Huether, Catherine Mary Clark,

    Richard Gruen, John Migliore, Lawrence Evenchick,

    Angela Parent, Kitty Kamieniecki, Faith Rayah

Dopey regional horror from Ontario (eh?) about some people being munched on by a giant prehistoric flying monster shark. By my count, eleven characters are killed by the shark and seven-and-a-half women strip down to their swimsuits but only one of them gets topless. Now that you know what's important, it's up to you whether you actually want to watch. 

Otley (1969)

 

OTLEY  (1969)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Dick Clement

    Tom Courtenay, Romy Schneider, Alan Badel,

    James Villiers, Leonard Rossiter, James Bolam,

    Fiona Lewis, Freddie Jones, Ronald Lacey

With all the spy movies that came out in the mid-to-late '60s, a few were bound to be underappreciated, and one of those was this one. Tom Courtenay plays Gerald Arthur Otley, a petty thief and overall layabout who's hijacked into an espionage caper and finds that his talent for bluffing and conniving could be his ticket to survival. A slim chance, to be sure, but it's all he's got. It's one of Courtenay's best roles, and arguably his funniest performance: a working-class idler who's in way over his head but won't admit that to anybody, least of all himself. Highlight: a high-speed car chase that coincides with Otley's behind-the-wheel driving test. 

Jacky In the Kingdom of Women (2014)

 

JACKY IN THE KINGDOM OF WOMEN 

    D: Riad Sattouf                        (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    Vincent Lacoste, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Didier Bourdon,

    Anémone, Michel Hazenavicius, Valérie Bonneton

An upside-down Cinderella story set in a society where women wield absolute power and men are sheep. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the Prince Charming figure, faced with choosing a mate from thousands of groveling, submissive men. There's a reveal - a literal one - at the end that's both a shock and somehow not much of a surprise. As satire, this is a little too on-the-nose, and as comedy it's a little too silly, but . . . Charlotte Gainsbourg. The odds of it ever playing in Iran or Afghanistan are zero. 

Utopia (1951)

 

UTOPIA  (1951)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Léo Joannon, John Berry

    Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Suzy Delair, Max Elloy,

    Adriano Rimaldi, Luigi Tosi, Claude May

Laurel and Hardy's last movie, in which Stan and Ollie inherit a topical island and a boat to take them there, isn't quite as bad s its reputation suggests. Some of the gags land, especially early on, but overall, it's hit-and-miss, and it drags toward the end, with a detour into political satire. Stan was visibly ill during filming, and while his performance is fine, his emaciated appearance undercuts some of the funny stuff. "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into," Ollie says just before the end title rolls. They're the last words he'd ever say onscreen. "I couldn't help it," Stan says, crying, just as he had in other films many times before. And with that, Laurel and Hardy's movie career was over. Original title: "Atoll K". 

Variety Girl (1947)

 

VARIETY GIRL  (1947)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Marshall

    Mary Hatcher, Olga San Juan, DeForest Kelley, 

    Frank Ferguson, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, 

    Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn,

    Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Veronica Lake,

    Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, Gail Russell,

    Burt Lancaster, William Bendix, Paulette Goddard,

    Barry Fitzgerald, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Preston,

    Pearl Bailey, Mona Freeman, William Demarest,

    Frank Faylen, Cecil Kellaway, Spike Jones

A sort of Hollywood home movie in which a girl turns up in the land of dreams hoping for an audition and lots of stars wander in and out, some of them on screen no more than a few seconds. Pearl Bailey's the highlight. Alan Ladd sings a duet with Dorothy Lamour, and he's not bad. Paulette Goddard takes a bubble bath. Hope and Crosby trade a few good-natured barbs and do a little soft-shoe dance routine. In a demonstration of erratic marksmanship, Burt Lancaster aims a gun at the cigarette in Lizabeth Scott's mouth and shoots her instead. William Bendix shoves a grapefruit in Olga San Juan's face. It's silly and inconsequential, but when the stakes are this low, it doesn't really matter very much.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

Chasers (1994)

CHASERS  (1994)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Dennis Hopper 

    Tom Berenger, William McNamara, Erika Eleniak,

    Crispin Glover, Gary Busey, Dean Stockwell,

    Seymour Cassell, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper

A broadly played but deadly dull comedy about a couple of Navy shore patrolmen assigned to escort a prisoner to the brig. The hitch is that the prisoner in question is a woman played by Playboy model Erika Eleniak. It's like "The Last Detail" played for laughs, or it would be, if there were any.