Noah (2014)

NOAH  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Darren Aranofsky
    Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone,
    Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman,
    Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll, Madison Davenport
Darren Aranofsky reimagines the Old Testament story, with surly, burly Russell Crowe as the guy who got all those animals on that great big boat.  It's been a few years since I read Genesis, so I'm not sure about stuff like the fallen angels in the form of these rumbling giant rock monsters who help build the ark and fight off the marauding descendants of Cain. The sinners don't look like they're having much fun, either. They look like they're already in hell. So what's the point of sinning then? And what difference would it make? Where's Cecil B. DeMille when you really need him? That guy knew how to make sin look good. The effects do look good, and Aronofsky deftly solves the problem of how Noah got all the beasts of the world to share space in the ark without eating each other. Then the rain comes and the water rises and everybody except the Noah family and their oceangoing menagerie dies. Noah goes bonkers eventually. That'll happen sometimes, when you're dedicated to your work and your boss is both God and a remote-control psychopath. Bad crazyness really takes over when Noah becomes convinced that the Big Guy wants him to kill his own grandchildren. Jennifer Connelly, looking a little too fashionably thin, plays Mrs. Noah. Ray Winstone chews it up as the leader of Cain's army. Anthony Hopkins cackles away as Methuselah, Noah's grandfather, who makes an interesting cup of tea and has a particular fondness for berries. (Maybe that's what he puts in the tea.) The narrative holds up for the first 90 minutes or so. It goes over the rail about when Noah does, and the film never really recovers, but it still has some powerful moments, the Icelandic locations look stunning, and wait till you hear who's singing the lullaby over the closing credits. 

Isle of the Dead (1945)

ISLE OF THE DEAD  (1945)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mark Robson
    Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer,
    Katherine Emery, Helene Thimig, Jason Robards
A shadowy Val Lewton thriller about some people quarantined on a Greek island during a plague. One of them could be possessed by en evil spirit, and it's probably not who you think. Moody lighting out of film noir and old German silents, and a good, moody performance by Karloff (looking vaguely like Kurt Vonnegut) as the army general who insists that nobody leave the island.

Our Nixon (2013)

OUR NIXON  (2013)  ¢ ¢ 1/2 
    D: Penny Lane
Tricky Dick through the eyes of three top aides - John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman and Dwight Chapin - all convicted felons in the Watergate cover-up and all armed, during their White House years, with Super 8 movie cameras. Television news footage and self-serving testimony complement the home movies, along with damning excerpts from the infamous Nixon tapes. There's nothing new here, really, but it's useful to be reminded, yet again, what a crude, needy, paranoid bastard we elected president once upon a time. That couldn't happen again, right?

Nowhere To Go (1958)

NOWHERE TO GO  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Seth Holt
    George Nader, Maggie Smith, 
    Bernard Lee, Bessie Love
A thief fences some stolen coins, stashes the money in a safe deposit box, and then has a hell of a time reconnecting with the loot. A good, low-key film noir from England's Ealing Studio. Catchy jazz score. Maggie Smith's first film.

42 (2013)

42  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Brian Helgeland
    Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie,
    Christopher Meloni, Lucas Black, John C. McGinley,
    Andre Holland, Alan Tudyk, Ryan Merriman, Max Gail
An inspirational biopic about a genuine American hero. It's not a mark of honor for America or its national pastime that no black ballplayer appeared in a major league game till 1947. The player was Jackie Robinson, and he got the job (and paid the price for it) because Branch Rickey, the crusty, cigar-chomping owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, decided it was time to break down the wall. (He also saw that Robinson's hitting and speed could help him win ball games.) Robinson's route to the show was not easy. The racism he encountered was ugly, and the movie does nothing to finesse that. (The race-baiting behavior of Philadelphia manager Ben Chapman is especially repugnant.) Chadwick Boseman plays Robinson, a proud, gifted, strong-willed guy pushed to the limit by a situation that requires him to show courage by not fighting back. He captures not only Robinson's competitive nature and submerged anger, but the exhausting toll the battle took on his psyche. Harrison Ford plays Rickey, and if you look and listen closely enough, you can tell it's Harrison Ford, but mostly what you see is Branch Rickey, hard-assed, uncompromising and larger-than-life. Not many actors share Ford's capacity for understatement, and not many actors could play such an over-the-top character without going over the top. It's a great part for a 70-year-old star making the transition from heroes to character parts, and it leaves you hoping it's only the beginning. You'd like to see a lot more of the new old Harrison Ford.

The Penalty (1920)

THE PENALTY  (1920)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Wallace Worsley
    Lon Chaney, Ethel Grey Terry, Charles Clary,
    Claire Adams, Kenneth Harlan, James Mason
Lon Chaney in one of his most physically demanding roles, as Blizzard, the legless king of the San Francisco underworld. Posing for a bust of Satan, Blizzard hatches an insane plan to import a gangster army, loot the city, acquire a new pair of legs and get revenge on the doctor who amputated his old ones. Chaney goes over the top at times - if he had a handlebar moustache, he'd be twirling it - but his ability to affect the appearance of an amputee, without camera tricks and without actually being an amputee, is astonishing. If you didn't know he had legs, you'd never know.

Rust and Bone (2012)

RUST AND BONE  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jacques Audiard
    Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, 
    Armand Verdure, Céline Sallette
This movie's about coping with damage, emotional and physical. Marion Cotillard plays a woman named Stéphanie, who trains and performs with orcas at a water show in the South of France. At least, she does that till an accident at work forces the amputation of both of her legs. Matthias Schoenaerts plays a man named Ali, a bare-knuckles boxer, nightclub bouncer and security guard, an impoverished single dad with a five-year-old son. It's a romance, but a grudging one. Stéphanie and Ali are both closed off and self-destructive, as hard on each other as they are on themselves. They're not much for sentiment, either of them, and they need each other more than either of them can acknowledge or express. Toward the end, they're on the phone, talking. There's a long pause, and you think this is it, they're going to hang up, they're finished. But they don't, and they're not, because, after all, where else would either of them go? The whole movie's like that. Like its two flawed, damaged characters, it doesn't go out of its way to make you care. And you end up caring anyway.