The Last Valley (1970)

THE LAST VALLEY  (1970)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: James Clavell
    Michael Caine, Omar Sharif, Florinda Bolkan,
    Nigel Davenport, Per Oscarsson, Arthur O'Connell
This is like a 17th-century variation on "Survivor", about what happens when a small contingent of soldiers moves into a remote mountain village during the Thirty Years' War. The soldiers, led by Captain Michael Caine, no longer care which side they're fighting on. They just want to be fed. The burgomaster, the town's nominal authority, turns his own mistress over to Caine, rather than risk Caine's wrath. The six local girls picked to keep the troops happy do what they're told without complaining. They know the alternative is worse. Even the parish priest, who in theory answers to somebody higher up, has to do some quick improvising when Caine threatens him with castration in a dispute over a religious shrine. It's an elaborate game of chess in which everybody's a participant, each character watching intently to see how the others are going to move, gauging how the game is playing out, and trying to adjust to any subtle shifts in the balance of power. There aren't any winners, only those who die and those who get to continue to play. The game goes on.

Omar Sharif

(1932-2015)

Nim's Island (2008)

NIM'S ISLAND  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin
    Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin, Gerard Butler
This is like two movies in one: a kid's adventure story starring Abigail Breslin as an 11-year-old girl living on a tropical island with her best friends Fred the lizard and Selkie the sea lion, and a fish-out-of-water comedy starring Jodie Foster as an agoraphobic writer of adventure novels who sets out on an adventure of her own. Gerard Butler plays both the girl's father and the novelist's fictional hero, and what's interesting about all these characters is the way the plot plays off the parallels between them. Kids, especially young girls, should enjoy the stuff on the island, and Foster, playing a character who's barely functional in the safety of her home and a complete basket case outside it, shows a real knack for physical comedy. 

Georgy Girl (1966)

GEORGY GIRL  (1966)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Silvio Narizzano

    Lynn Redgrave, James Mason, Alan Bates,

    Charlotte Rampling, Bill Owen, Claire Kelly

A mod, kitchen-sink comedy starring Redgrave as a big-boned, big-hearted girl who struggles and somehow triumphs, despite her bitch of a flatmate, her bastard of a boyfriend, and the smug, wealthy patron who wants to make her his mistress. Notable for its black-and-white starkness and blithe cynicism. (Charlotte Rampling's approach to motherhood is as funny as it is appalling.) Redgrave's signature role.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Martin Scorsese
    Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie,
    Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner,
    Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Joanna Lumley, 
    Christine Ebersole, Shea Whigham, Katarina Cas
Capitalism goes on a cocaine binge in Martin Scorsese's three-hour buzzfest starring Leo as Jordan Belfort, a real-life stock trader who made and spent an obscene fortune in the '80s and '90s by peddling dreams to fools and pocketing the profits. It's a manic, hellish, jacked-up vision: the American Dream at its most crass and extravagant. Emotionally it's a dead zone, but that kind of fits. Its phone-bank hustlers are rats on a treadmill, and if they've shed their humanity to be where they are, they don't seem to miss it much. They're hooked on the treadmill, and the bigger and faster and higher it goes, the more wired they get.  They're mainlining greed, and the booze and dope and sex (and boats and cars and servants and clothes) are side effects. They love being rats. 

Blonde Venus (1932)

BLONDE VENUS  (1932)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Josef von Sternberg
    Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant,
    Dickie Moore, Sidney Toler, Rita La Roy
A rags-to-riches melodrama with Dietrich as a nightclub chanteuse who goes back to work to pay for the medical treatment that can save her husband's life. A great vehicle for Dietrich, which is all that matters, really. If Dietrich in a white tux and top hat doesn't do it for you, there's Dietrich stripping out of a gorilla suit to sing "Hot Voodoo", an image that's as sexy as it is bizarre, and a classic Dietrich moment, for sure. 

Beach Town (2015)

BEACH TOWN  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Erik Hammen
    Sarah Winsor, Ahren Buhmann, Riley Neldam
    Kenna Kettrick, William Poole, Alyssa Kay,
    Mel Cafe, Zach Sanders, Maya Briller
This movie is like the cinematic equivalent of hanging out, and I mean that in a really good way. It was shot entirely in Seattle, mostly in Ballard, which really does have a beach in a park called Golden Gardens, and it's as close to plotless as a movie can be that has any kind of story arc at all. It recalls a time when the world was young and so were the people in it, when life revolved around record stores and bike shops and hand-to-mouth jobs and little hole-in-the-wall cinemas and little hole-in-the-wall clubs where you or somebody you knew sometimes played music. And, of course, the beach. It's a kicked-back movie to hang out in, if that's what you're looking to do, happy to wander around on foot, tuned to its own leisurely rhythm and going its own leisurely way. The water in the background in the beach scenes is Puget Sound, which is not exactly tropical, and explains why there are a lot of people chilling out on the sand and not very many people swimming.

Trip With the Teacher (1975)

TRIP WITH THE TEACHER  (1975)  1/2 ¢
    D: Earl Barton
    Zalman King, Brenda Fogarty, Robert Porter,
    Robert Gribbin, Cathy Worthington, Dina Ousley,
    Jill Voight, Susan Russell, Jack Driscoll
Pointless, witless sleaze about a couple of psychotic bikers terrorizing some girls in a mini school bus. It's an exploitation flick, sure, but there's something about the way the movie assaults its female characters, and their crippling passivity, that's repellent. It's not just an insult to women. It's an insult to anybody with a few functioning brain cells. The people who made it clearly didn't give a shit. They got the movie they wanted, and it's a rancid piece of work, all the way up to its stupefying, happy-face ending. Future softcore auteur Zalman King - taking notes, no doubt - plays one of the psychos.