Les Miserables (2012)

LES MISERABLES  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Tom Hooper
    Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway,
    Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks,
    Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter
The screen version of the hit musical based on Victor Hugo's epic novel, starring Hugh Jackman as the heroic, beleaguered Jean Valjean and Russell Crowe as his implacable nemesis, Inspector Javert. It's long and sometimes lacks subtlety and its bigness isn't always an asset, but its best moments pack a punch, and its vision of what crushing poverty in 19th-century France might've looked like is not pretty at all. Distinguished by the fact that all the singing was done by the actors on set, and most of the script is sung. The cast handles the challenge well enough, some with more skill than others, the emotional show-stopper being Anne Hathaway's aching rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream". Good luck trying to stay dry-eyed through that.

Champagne (1928)

CHAMPAGNE  (1928)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Alfred Hitchcock
    Betty Balfour, Jean Bradin,
    Theo von Alten, Gordon Harker
The fortunes of a party-loving heiress take a tumble when she learns her father has lost everything in the stock market. A routine silent melodrama with some nice visual touches and a lively lead performance by British flapper Betty Balfour. It's a long way from terrible, but with a script that was being cobbled together on the spot, it lacks the director's usual premeditated control. Hitchcock hated working on it, and considered it his least significant work.

The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002)

THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS  (2002)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Alan Rudolph
    Campbell Scott, Hope Davis,
    Denis Leary, Robin Tunney
Scott and Davis play an upper-middle-class couple whose lives revolve around their shared dental practice, their three young daughters, their 10-year-old marriage and, in the time covered by the story, a communal case of the flu. When he starts to suspect that she's having an affair, his imagination goes into overdrive and an apparition in the form of an obnoxious patient (a seedy-looking Denis Leary) moves in to provide a cynical running commentary and a lot of unsolicited advice. Some of this is funny, but not all of it. Usually you can tell what's fantasy from what isn't, but not always. Mostly what you get is an intelligently crafted look at two ordinary people in all their complexity and imperfection, trying to muddle through a difficult time. It's Rudolph at his most accessible, a quiet celebration of marriage and raising kids as the most daunting, rewarding and heroic thing most of us will ever do. And watch your step, okay? One of the girls just threw up on the floor. 

Earth vs. the Spider (1958)

EARTH VS. THE SPIDER  (1958)  ¢ ¢
    D: Bert I. Gordon
    Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Gene Persson,
    Gene Roth, Hal Torrey, Mickey Finn
And it's a damn big spider, too.

Divine Intervention (2002)

DIVINE INTERVENTION  (2002)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Elia Suleiman
    Elia Suleiman, Manal Khader, Nayef Fahoum Daher
A man driving down a highway throws an apricot pit out the window and a tank explodes. A balloon bearing the likeness of Yasser Arafat floats over a military checkpoint whose on-duty guards radio headquarters for instructions on whether or not to shoot it down. An attractive woman strolls through the same checkpoint, distracting the guards, and a lookout tower collapses in her wake. A man systematically gets rid of his garbage by throwing it in a neighbor's garden, and complains loudly when she finally starts throwing it back. A firing-range target in the shape of a Palestinian woman magically comes to life and retaliates against the synchronized gunmen taking aim at her.  A wry, deadpan comedy about the absurdity of life in Israel/Palestine. It opens with Santa Claus being mugged on the outskirts of Nazareth, and ends with two people sitting on a couch watching a pressure cooker hissing on a stove. One of them suggests that the other get up and turn the kettle off, but neither of them makes a move. The kettle hisses on, the final metaphor in a movie full of metaphors reflecting both the universal human condition and the particular ongoing tragic farce that's called the Middle East.

Stagecoach (1986)

STAGECOACH  (1986)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ted Post
    Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings,
    Johnny Cash, John Schneider, Elizabeth Ashley,
    Anthony Newley, Tony Franciosa, Mary Crosby,
    June Carter Cash, Jessi Colter, Lash LaRue
Back in 1985, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash recorded an album together, forming an outlaw country supergroup called the Highwaymen. A year later, they teamed up for a TV movie, a remake of the 1939 John Ford film "Stagecoach". Willie plays Doc Holliday, fighting consumption and trying to get to Tombstone and a rendezvous with Wyatt Earp. Kristofferson plays the Ringo Kid, the role that in the earlier version made John Wayne an A-list star. Jennings plays a gambler with a shady past. Cash plays a no-nonsense lawman riding shotgun on the stage. Kristofferson's the only real actor in the group, and his scenes with Elizabeth Ashley (in the old Claire Trevor role) aren't bad. Jennings gets by, more or less. Cash could stand to lighten up a bit. Willie's just Willie, the old prairie hipster who goes his own way no matter what. The picture's a mashup of western movie clichés, but as a vehicle for its four stars to hang their Stetsons on, it's all right. When they walk elbow-to-elbow toward the saloon and the climactic confrontation with the bad guys, it doesn't really matter that you've watched the same thing happen in better films a dozen times before. It might not be the myth-making they were hoping for, and which they found in some of their music, but there's something about it that feels exactly right.

The New Women (2001)

THE NEW WOMEN  (2001)  ¢ 1/2
    D: Todd Hughes
    Mary Woronov, Jamie Tolbert, Sandra Kinder,
    Jane Ray, Roma Maffia, Jenny Shimizu,
    Amy Hill, Tracy Reiner, Michael White
I was in the middle of watching this movie when Ms. Applebaum came in. It was the part where the four women in the big camper are at the feminist commune. See, there was this rainstorm, and after it was over, everybody slept for two days, but the men never woke up. So the women had to take over everything, but eventually a lot of them started starving and wandering around like zombies looking for food, and that's when the four women got out of town in the camper. They're trying to get to a place called Elysium that they've heard about on the radio, and one of the women is pregnant, and they end up at the commune because the women there say they've got a doctor, but it turns out the doctor's just a Ph.D., not a medical type, and after some freeform dancing and a lot of painfully blissed-out rhetoric, the camper women get out of there, except for one of them who decides to stay at the commune. After about a minute of this, Ms. Applebaum said, "This is real bad." Then the three women who are left meet these two psycho chicks who terrorize them, and one of the campers has to dance for the psycho chicks, and she even takes her blouse off, and this is where Ms. Applebaum said (again), "This is real bad." So then the camper women escape from the psycho chicks and they get to Elysium, which is like this woman-run clinic and medical facility and it seems real nice at first, but it's not, and the pregnant woman has her baby and then she escapes in the camper with a little girl, but the other women are left behind, and then it's like 15 years later, and I'm pretty sure that somewhere in there, Ms. Applebaum said (yet again), "This is real bad."