The Phone Call (2013)

 

THE PHONE CALL  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Mat Kirby

    Sally Hawkins, Jim Broadbent

A woman working in a crisis phone-line center fields a call from a man who's in the process of killing himself. An Oscar-winning short film that's marginally more uplifting than that plot description probably suggests. Sally Hawkins plays the woman who answers the phone. Jim Broadbent plays the voice on the other end of the line. 

Grand Central Murder (1942)

 

GRAND CENTRAL MURDER  (1942)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Sylvan Simon

    Van Heflin, Sam Levene, Patricia Dane,

    Connie Gilchrist, Tom Conway, Virginia Grey,

    Cecilia Parker, Samuel S. Hinds, Mark Daniels,

    Betty Wells, George Lynn, Millard Mitchell 

An ensemble whodunit with a gallery of suspects comparing notes and alibis in the case of an obnoxious Broadway star found murdered in a railroad car. My colleague Ms. Applebaum figured out who the killer was long before I did, but there are a lot of potential killers to choose from. Van Heflin as a wise-cracking private eye may or may not be the murderer, but he's definitely having the most fun.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Jason Reitman

    Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard,

    Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Celeste O'Connor,

    Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson,

    Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver, J.K. Simmons

The spirit of Harold Ramis hangs over everything in this spectral comedy, as Egon Spengler's 12-year-old granddaughter (Mckenna Grace) heads up a new, young generation of ghostbusters. CGI allows Harold himself to make a posthumous appearance, while still-breathing colleagues Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson step in to help the kids blast the ghosts at the end. The movie's neither deep nor full of surprises, but it's a lot of fun, and Grace, who's on screen much of the time, grounds it in a way most actors her age couldn't dream of doing. She's a cool kid who loves bad jokes, and as the nerdy, brainy, self-contained heir to Egon, she's perfect. Egon would be crazy about her, and somewhere in the afterlife, Harold Ramis is smiling. 

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

 

THE GAY DIVORCEE  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Mark Sandrich

    Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton,

    Alice Brady, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, Betty Grable

Fred woos Ginger, but she resists. He persists, and she gives in. They do "The Contintental", too. The song won an Academy Award.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

 

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Peter Yates

    Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan,

    Steven Keats, Alex Rocco, Joe Santos

A low-level Boston hoodlum who makes his living selling guns to bank robbers tries to cut a deal with a government agent in exchange for a break on a prison sentence. Mitchum gives one of his best performances as a guy who's fucked and knows it, but it's really an ensemble piece, with Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats and Alex Rocco all scary good as the kind of "friends" you'd be better off not knowing. Yates' direction is low-key and functional, and the world he creates is a self-contained nightmare that plays by its own crooked rules. And the masks, one of the few things in the movie that comes close to comedy: You can't rob a bank in this movie unless the robbers are all wearing matching masks.

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

 

THE FLESH EATERS  (1964)  ¢ ¢

    D: Jack Curtis

    Martin Kosleck, Byron Sanders, Barbara Wilkin,

    Rita Morley, Ray Tudor, Christopher Drake

Five characters stranded on a tiny, remote island battle a flesh-eating parasite in a surprisingly artful drive-in flick. There's the alcoholic actress, the heroic, he-man pilot, the evil Nazi scientist, the crazy beatnik, and the girl who surrenders her blouse when somebody asks for strips of cloth to make bandages - all of them watching the water and hoping to survive without having their bones picked clean. There's some fun in the script and the overdone performances, and Curtis clearly has a sense of what to do behind the camera. The editor was Radley Metzger, who would make his mark with a series of sometimes inventive porno movies. 

Deluge (1933)

DELUGE  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Felix E. Feist

    Peggy Shannon, Sidney Blackmer, Lois Wilson,

    Fred Kohler, Ralf Harolde, Edward Van Sloan

A pre-Code disaster adventure that begins where most disaster movies leave off (or never get to) - the end of the world. After that's all over - it takes a reel or two for all those model skyscrapers to topple over - it's up to the survivors to figure out how to carry on. This looks a lot like an early-'30s serial, with close calls and narrow escapes and music in the background that never shuts off. Long considered a lost film, it's also a strange one that always seems about to go off in some unexpected direction, and does, with a final existential image that, under the circumstances, feels just right.