The Teacher (1974)

THE TEACHER  (1974)  ¢ ¢
    D: Howard Avedis
    Angel Tompkins, Jay North, Barry Atwater,
    Anthony James, Marlene Schmidt, Quinn O'Hara
Angel Tompkins plays your average high school teacher who looks like a Playboy model, drives a Corvette, and spends her days off sunbathing topless on a boat in the middle of the harbor. Dennis the Menace plays the student she hooks up with for a little post-graduate study. It looks like he's got a lot to learn, but maybe she grades on a curve. 

Movie Star Moment: Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp
in "City Lights" (1931)

    "City Lights" is the Charlie Chaplin movie where the Little Tramp befriends a blind flower girl who mistakenly believes he's a millionaire. Unwilling to reveal his true identity, he goes along with the ruse, while trying to raise the money to pay for an operation that can restore her sight. A lot of great comedy comes out of that, but what makes the film transcendent is its final image, an exquisitely simple shot that could make the most stone-hearted moviegoer choke up. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven't, keep a handkerchief handy and watch "City Lights".

Roller Town (2012)

ROLLER TOWN  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Andrew Bush
    Mark Little, Kayla Lorette, George William Basil,
    Pat Thornton, Adam Bayne, Brian Heighton
Kids on skates band together and fight back when a gangster and a disco-hating mayor try to close down their beloved roller rink. A silly, outrageous, good-natured spoof on the disco-era artifact "Roller Boogie", and the greatest roller-disco comedy shot entirely in Halifax, Nova Scotia, you'll ever see. Probably. The sketch comedy troupe Picnicface cooked this one up. Keep a finger on the pause button for the end credits.

Stalker (1979)

STALKER  (1979)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Andrei Tarkovsky
    Alexander Kaidanovsky, Nikolai Grinko,
    Anatoly Solonitsin, Alice Friendlich
Somewhere in an unnamed country, there's a place called "the Zone". Armed guards patrol its perimeter, allowing nobody in. The guards themselves are afraid to go in there. Inside the Zone, there's said to be a room where, if you can find it, your innermost wish becomes reality. Three men break through the guarded border and enter the Zone. One's a writer. Another's a professor. The third's a "stalker", a kind of underground tour guide who gets paid to escort travelers surreptitiously into, through and out of the Zone. A demanding, ambiguous, sci-fi puzzle, long on talk and short on action, a slog to sit through but great to look at. The scenes outside the Zone are in sepia. Everything in them looks grimy and wet, a primitive industrial landscape in an advanced state of decay. The Zone doesn't look much more inviting, but at least it's in color, and the difference is startling. Some puzzles aren't meant to be solved, and this might be one of them, but if you enjoyed trying to wrap your head around Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life", or Lars von Trier's "Melancholia", or Tarkovsky's "Solaris", you might like "Stalker", too. Geoff Dyer's "Zona", published in 2012, is a book-length meditation on this film.

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away (2012)

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: WORLDS AWAY  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Andrew Adamson
    Erica Linz, Igor Zaripov, 
    Lutz Halhubner, John Clarke
A girl goes to the circus, where she follows an aerialist down a rabbit hole and into a dream world that's ten times stranger than the circus. That's it for the story, but it's enough to string together a bunch of Cirque du Soleil's greatest hits. Some sequences are more striking than others, but they all exhibit a keen grasp of the laws of physics, an eye-popping sense of spectacle, and a willingness to explore what amazing things the human body can do. Drop down the rabbit hole yourself, and see.

Hook (1991)

HOOK  (1991)  ¢ ¢
    D: Steven Spielberg
    Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts,
    Bob Hoskins, Maggie Smith, Caroline Gooodall,
    Charlie Korsmo, Amber Scott, Gwyneth Paltrow
Steven Spielberg's sequel to "Peter Pan" (as if one was needed), with Peter now a grownup dad returning to Neverland to save his children from the clutches of Captain Hook. The trouble is, Peter doesn't remember anything from his life as a Lost Boy. He no longer knows how to crow or fly. He has to learn all over again. Robin Williams (looking constipated) plays Peter. Julia Roberts (nice legs) plays Tinkerbell. Dustin Hoffman (ugly wig) plays Hook. Maggie Smith plays Wendy as an old woman and Bob Hoskins plays Smee. The setup has some potential, but Spielberg piles on enough cuteness to out-Disney Disney, and that's too much. Kids should like it. Grownups beware.

Easy Rider (1969)

EASY RIDER  (1969)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Dennis Hopper
    Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson,
    Luke Askew, Luana Anders, Sabrina Scharf,
    Karen Black, Toni Basil, Robert Walker
Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play Wyatt and Billy, a couple of 20th-century outlaws who make some money smuggling cocaine out of Mexico and take off across the U.S. on motorcycles, heading for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Hopper's groundbreaking first feature became a cinematic anthem for the 1960s, filled with late-'60s cliches, but played with a conviction that few other movies from or about the period seem to get. Nicholson's star-making performance as a loquacious small-town lawyer should bring a knowing grin to anybody who remembers smoking pot for the first time, and there's some great rock & roll on the soundtrack. Wyatt and Billy might be free-wheeling free spirits, but they're not entirely likeable, and they're a distinctly odd couple when it comes to temperament and style. One's a fashionably decked-out narcissist. The other's a ratty, unkempt sociopath. They don't think much beyond themselves, and their behavior sometimes reflects that. They complain about not being able to get a room in a cheap motel, but when they're turned away from a cheap motel late at night, you suspect it's got less to do with their bikes and long hair than the fact that they're acting like assholes. Some might see them as martyrs, but they're sure as hell not saints, and that gives the movie's dreamy pessimism a subversive, misanthropic edge. Still, nobody looked cooler back then than Peter Fonda on a motorcycle, and nothing distilled counterculture rebellion to a more succinct level of expression than Hopper's defiant, one-fingered salute. The violent, senseless conclusion can still make your blood run cold.

Karen Black

(1939-2013)