Lost In Paris (2016)

LOST IN PARIS  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon
    Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, Emmanuelle Riva,
    Pierre Richard, Frédéric Meert, Bruno Romy
A Canadian backpacker, an old woman with memory issues and a homeless guy living in a tent find themselves crossing paths and scraping by on the streets of Paris, the banks of the Seine, and finally the Eiffel Tower. Another sweetly eccentric comedy by Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel, who do sight-gag humor as well as anybody here in the 21st century. Sometimes it's enough just watching them dance.

Island In the Sky (1953)

ISLAND IN THE SKY  (1953)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: William A. Wellman
    John Wayne, Lloyd Nolan, Walter Abel,
    James Arness, Andy Devine, Allyn Joslyn,
    Jimmy Lydon, Darryl Hickman, Harry Carey Jr.,
    Hal Baylor, Sean McCrory, Wally Cassell,
    Regis Toomey, Paul Fix, George Chandler
Square-jawed heroics starring John Wayne as an Army transport pilot forced to land his plane in the wintry wastes of Canada. The Duke and his men survive, but now they're stranded in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of a frozen lake, with a dwindling supply of fuel, very little food, a dying radio, and not nearly enough clothing to offset a temperature that's stuck at about 70° below. Will fellow flyboys Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Allyn Joslin and Andy Devine get to them before they all perish in the snow? Conditions on the ground and in the air don't look good, but remember, this is a John Wayne movie. It's one of Wayne's lesser known mid-career vehicles, a box-office moneymaker that took forever to turn up on video. Keep your eyes peeled for Fess Parker, Mike ("Touch") Connors and a grown-up Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer in the supporting cast.

Climax (2018)

CLIMAX  (2018)  ¢ ¢ 
    D: Gaspar Noé
    Sofia Boutella, Souheila Yacoub, Claude Gajan Maull,
    Giselle Palmer, Thea Carla Schott, Romain Guillermic,
    Taylor Kastle, Kiddy Smile, Lea Vlamos, Alaia Alsafir
The members of a modern dance company party down after a rehearsal, not knowing that somebody has spiked the sangria with LSD. This is more like a situation than a story, like "Suspiria" if you just cut to the part where everybody goes to hell. It isn't nearly as much fun to look at, though, and the fusion of bad acid and characters you don't like to begin with does not lead to a real good time. If these folks all want to trip out and kill each other, it's okay with me. It just seems kind of unfair to ask the rest of us to watch.

Spartacus (1960)

SPARTACUS  (1960)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Stanley Kubrick
    Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier,
    Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis,
    Woody Strode, John Gavin, John Ireland,
    Nina Foch, Charles McGraw, John Dall,
    Herbert Lom, John Hoyt, Harold J. Stone
The movie Kirk Douglas seems likely to be remembered for, a literate, emotionally satisfying epic about the slave revolt against Rome in 73 B.C. Between them, director Stanley Kubrick, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and producer/star Douglas fill the picture with action, humor and romance, while maintaining a level of intelligence and a passionate sense of purpose that big-budget films sometimes lose track of. The scope is massive (Douglas hired 8,000 men from the Spanish army to stage the climactic battle scene), but the focus invariably centers on the everyday workings of human life. A persuasive argument for both the 70mm process and the continued preservation of older movies. (The restored print contains a now-famous exchange between Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis that didn't make the cut in 1960.) Anybody who doesn't consider Jean Simmons one of the screen's great beauties has obviously never seen "Spartacus".

Kirk Douglas

(1916-2020)

King of Jazz (1930)

KING OF JAZZ  (1930)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Murray Anderson
    Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Laura La Plante,
    Walter Brennan, Slim Summerville, The Rhythm Boys
A collection of variety acts from the early sound era, elaborately staged and presided over by bandleader Paul Whiteman. Some bits are more lively than others and the vaudeville novelty acts are kind of quaint, but the production values are spectacular, enhanced by the use of two-strip Technicolor. Highlights: a young Bing Crosby harmonizing with the Rhythm Boys, and the Whiteman orchestra's rendition of "Rhapsody In Blue". Also on the bill: the first-ever color cartoon, directed by Woody Woodpecker's Walter Lantz. The high-kicking Russell Markert Girls, whose legs appear in several numbers, would soon become better known as the Radio City Rockettes.

The Dead Don't Die (2019)

THE DEAD DON'T DIE  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jim Jarmusch
    Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny,
    Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Steve Buscemi,
    Selena Gomez, Iggy Pop, Carol Kane
Jim Jarmusch pays tribute to George Romero in "The Dead Don't Die", starring Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny as small-town cops faced wth a plague of the undead. It seems that polar fracking has knocked the earth off  its axis, causing day and night to be all screwed up and once-buried corpses to (sort of) come to life. Tilda Swinton plays an undertaker. Tom Waits plays a crazy hermit. Steve Buscemi plays a redneck farmer. Iggy Pop plays a zombie who craves coffee and Carol Kane plays one who loves Chardonnay. True to Romero, Jarmusch views zombies as a metaphor for consumerism, and he has an eye for little things that he finds interesting, despite or because of the fact that they're completely incidental. Like when the camera pans along a city street and lands on a white bicycle leaning against a tree. The bicycle has nothing to do with anything in the story, but it's there, and viewers who know about white bicycles will know what that means. Considering that most zombie movies are satires to begin with, a Jim Jarmusch zombie movie makes perfect sense: the Zen master of deadpan and the slightly less deadpan undead.

Thomas Jefferson (1997)

THOMAS JEFFERSON  (1997)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ken Burns
A three-hour documentary on the life of America's brilliant and somewhat elusive third president. Like Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson was a product of the Enlightenment, and nobody except Franklin could match his range of skills and interests. As a slave owner who wrote the defining document on human freedom, he was also contradictory. He viewed slavery as a curse on the nation, yet he never freed his own slaves, and according to some sources, fathered several children with one of them. He was a forceful advocate for states' rights, and an equally forceful advocate for the separation of church and state. He spent lavishly (and often went into debt), played music, invented a machine that could reproduce his letters as he wrote them, and did significant work in architecture and horticulture. After retiring from public life, he founded the University of Virginia. He's one of those primal figures you can't imagine American history without. His image is on the nickel and the two-dollar bill. Photography hadn't come along yet in Jefferson's time, which limits what Burns has to work with visually. He uses a few black-and-white photos of slaves (not Jefferson's), but mostly relies on paintings and engravings, idyllically lit pastoral scenes, and footage shot in and around Monticello. Ossie Davis is the narrator. Sam Waterston does the voice of Jefferson. Watching this, you can't help wondering what Jefferson would have to say about the political situation today. And if you should hear a faint whirring sound the next time  president #45 opens his mouth and speaks, that's Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave.