An Affair (2018)

AN AFFAIR  (2018)  ¢ ¢
    D: Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken
    Andrea Braein Hovig, Tarjei Sandvik Moe, 
    Anneke von der Lippe, Carsten Bjornlund,
    Agnes Kittelson, Ingjerd Egeberg
Unsettling melodrama from Norway about a high-school gym teacher who gets involved with one of her male students. Every move this woman makes, you want to scream at her, don't do this, it's a real bad idea. So, of course, she does. And it is. I know stuff like this happens, but watching it happen, even in a movie, can make you cringe, especially when the behavior involved is as wrong as it is irrational. Tarjei Sandvik Moe, who plays the student, seems way more mature, self-confident and sexually sophisticated than any high-school freshman the real world has ever known, but, who knows, maybe things are different in Norway.

Valdez Is Coming (1971)

VALDEZ IS COMING  (1971)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Edwin Sherin
    Burt Lancaster, Susan Clark, Jon Cypher,
    Frank Silvera, Richard Jordan, Barton Heyman
This isn't really a spaghetti western, though it was shot in the same part of Spain where Sergio Leone made his movies with Clint Eastwood. Burt Lancaster's company produced it, and it stars Burt as a town constable (and retired Army sharpshooter) with a sense of justice that's not always welcome on the frontier. It's based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, and as with Lancaster's other early-'70s westerns ("Lawman" and "Ulzana's Raid"), it's the moral implications that give it an edge. Burt's miscast as a Mexican, but the movie's a good one, and the ending's not what you'd expect. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (2018)

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE  
(2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman
An animated superhero movie from Marvel, in which multiple universes crash into each other, resulting in multiple versions of Spider-Man. One of them's an anime girl. One's a pig. One's a film-noir character in a trench coat, shades and a fedora. One's a quick-witted high-school girl. One's a middle-aged Peter Parker, who's put away a few hamburgers and put on a few pounds. One's a young black kid named Miles, wh0's new to the superhero game. The message is that anybody can be Spider-Man, which is a nice thought, but conveniently ignores the fact that if anybody could be Spider-Man, Marvel would be out of business. Liev Schreiber, Mahershala Ali and Lily Tomlin do some of the voices, and there's a final, farewell cameo by the late Stan Lee. 

Naked Edge / Take 7

Murielle Telio and a couple of mermaids 
  in "The Nice Guys"
Some grotesquely obese dancers 
  in "Nocturnal Animals"
The two girls in the wine vat 
  in "Trail of the Pink Panther"
Matt Smith and a bunch of other guys 
  in "Mapplethorpe"
Isabelle Grill, Jack Reynor and a bunch of wailing women 
  in "Midsommar"
A bunch of skinny-dipping soldiers 
  in "Wheels of Terror"
Some Revolutionary War extras 
  in "Sweet Liberty"
The amazons under the waterfall 
  in "She-Wolves of the Wasteland"
The Roman soldiers being inspected by Madeline Kahn 
  in "History of the World Part I"
Numerous B-movie actresses  
  in "Machete Maidens Unleashed"

The Mackintosh Man (1973)

THE MACKINTOSH MAN  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: John Huston
    Paul Newman, Dominique Sanda, James Mason,
    Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, Michael Hordern,
    Nigel Patrick, Percy Herbert, Peter Vaughan
Paul Newman plays an agent working for British intelligence (his nationality changes with every new fake passport) in an espionage caper that involves a diamond heist, a prison break, a communist operative played by Ian Bannen and a sanctimonious politician played by James Mason. It's good, escapist spy work, and Newman's second collaboration with John Huston, following "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" the year before. Walter Hill's screenplay, based on a novel by Desmond Bagley, teases you along with just enough information to keep you guessing, and Huston directs with a wink, a nod and a practiced eye. Maurice Jarre's zithery musical score echoes, at least faintly, "The Third Man".

Metal Heart (2018)

METAL HEART  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Hugh O'Conor
    Jordanne Jones, Leah McNamara, Moe Dunford,
    Aaron Heffernan, Leah Doyle, Yasmine Akram
A coming-of-age movie from Ireland about a pair of teenaged sisters, fraternal twins, spending a last summer in the house together before they move on to college, or a career, or whatever the grown-up world has in store for them. One's a perky, popular, blonde-haired beauty. The other's a goth. What happens is fairly predictable and maybe at times a bit cute, but Jordanne Jones' performance as the outcast Emma commands your attention from the start. I couldn't really buy her makeover, or her night out with her sister's three obnoxious friends. She seems too smart for that, and as colors other than black start to slip into her wardrobe, some of what makes her unique and appealing gets lost. Maybe that's a part of growing up, but it's sad to see it happen, just the same. 

Torrid Zone (1940)

TORRID ZONE  (1940)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Keighley
    James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien,
    Andy Devine, Helen Vinson, Jerome Cowan,
    George Tobias, George Reeves, Grady Sutton
Cagney and O'Brien play fast-talking Yanks who butt heads running a banana plantation. Sheridan plays a nightclub chanteuse who incurs O'Brien's wrath by (apparently) daring to exist. She still gets all the movie's best lines. A pulp exercise in economic colonialism in which money equals power and the indigenous rebel leader fighting to get his stolen land back is the villain of the piece. It ends without resolving much of anything. Cagney never makes it to that job in Chicago. O'Brien's still a bullying asshole. Sheridan's dreams are up in he air as much as ever. The rebel leader has escaped for the third or fourth time. And the two hustling Americanos are still going at it, cracking the whip, barking out orders and pushing people around.