Haunted Honeymoon (1940)

 

HAUNTED HONEYMOON  (1940)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Arthur B. Woods

    Robert Montgomery, Constance Cummings, Leslie Banks,

    Seymour Hicks, Robert Newton, Googie Withers

Lord Peter Wimsey (Robert Montgomery) buys an old country house as a gift for his bride (Constance Cummings), so what happens? The man he buys the house from turns up murdered. Not only that, but Lord and Lady Wimsey have sworn a mutual oath not to get involved in any more detective work. The mystery part of the story almost doesn't matter in this one. There are long stretches of the film where it disappears entirely, and nobody seems to care. Which makes you wonder: Suppose they made a movie like this where somebody gets murdered and the crime just never gets solved. Has anybody ever done that? And if not, how come?

The Gunfighter (1950)

THE GUNFIGHTER  (1950)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Henry King

    Gregory Peck, Millard Mitchell, Helen Westcott,

    Jean Parker, Karl Malden, Skip Homeier,

    Anthony Ross, Richard Jaeckel, Verna Felton

A gunfighter drifts from town to town, hounded by the law and challenged by every hot-shot kid with a six-gun. He'd like to stop drifting and settle down and not be a target everywhere he goes, but he can't escape his past or his reputation. He's Jimmy Ringo, "the fastest gun in the West," and he's doomed. A relatively low-key frontier drama, really a study in gunslinger psychology, that in a vague way reflects film noir, while anticipating an era of darker, more complex westerns that would follow in the decade ahead. Peck gives one of his best performances in the title role. Millard Mitchell plays his partner from the old days, now a town marshall. Karl Malden's a bartender with a sharp eye for business. Richard Jaeckel and Skip Homeier play young punks who don't think Peck looks all that tough. (They're wrong about that.) There are parallels to "High Noon", and it clocks in at a quick 84 minutes, thanks to Barbara McLean's editing and the efficiency of Henry King.

The Green Knight (2021)

THE GREEN KNIGHT  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 

    D: David Lowery

    Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton,

    Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie,

    Ralph Ineson, Barry Keoghan, Erin Kellyman

The young nephew of King Arthur takes up the challenge of a mysterious Green Knight, and embarks on a heroic quest involving bandits, a fox, some giants, Saint Winifred, a lord who's obsessed with hunting and the lord's seductive lady, all leading up to a second, climactic encounter with the Green Knight. The emotional payoff is limited, but the movie looks like a storybook come to life, and Lowery has a real instinct for how to tell an age-old tale cinematically. The script is literate, with moments of tongue-in-cheek humor - the potential for a Monty Python-style spoof is obvious - and the arboreal knight of the title bears an uncanny resemblance to Groot in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies. 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Sporgersi

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.