Longlegs (2024)

 

LONGLEGS  (2o24)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Osgood Perkins

    Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood,

    Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, Dakota Daulby

An FBI agent, psychic or autistic or possibly both, gets involved in the hunt for a serial killer played by a bonkers Nicolas Cage. Suspension of disbelief could be hard to come by with this one, unless you look at the whole movie as a sort of fucked-up dream. None of it really adds up, but Maika Monroe is effectively understated as the agent, and Cage's wigged-out performance could've been modeled on Tiny Tim.

Bowanga Bowanga (1951)

 

BOWANGA BOWANGA  (1951)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Dawn

    Lewis Wilson, Morton C. Thompson, Don Orlando,

    Dana Wilson, Charleen Hawks, Frances Dubay

Pith-helmeted adventurers are captured by "the white sirens of Africa," an unlikely tribe of female warriors who are in the market for a few good men. The amazon queen wants to take the biggest and hunkiest of the men for herself and sacrifice the others to the Fire God, but the rest of the girls think that's a terrible waste of men and stage a rebellion. So there's some singing and dancing, and a couple of catfights, and two of the men get into wrestling matches with two of the women, and eventually the guys make their escape because one of them was thoughtful enough to pack a small arsenal of fireworks to bring along on the expedition. Which is, like, a spoiler, I guess, but it's useful to know that if you're in Africa being chased by 20 or 30 savage women, a cache of fireworks could be your key to survival.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS  (1948)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Foster 

    Burt Lancaster, Joan Fontaine, Robert Newton, 

    Jay Novello, Grizelda Harvey, Aminta Dyne

A damaged war veteran, plagued by bouts of uncontrolled violence, kills a man in a bar, meets a nice girl, and gets blackmailed into doing some dirty work in an efficiently made him noir shot in Hollywood but set in foggy London. Nicely underplayed by Fontaine and Lancaster, with a nasty turn by Robert Newton as the hoodlum who sets Burt up. The ending feels a little contrived, but that's a great film noir title, don't you think?

Is Anybody There? (2008)

 

IS ANYBODY THERE?  (2008)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Crowley

    Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff,

    David Morrissey, Peter Vaughan, Leslie Phillips,

    Sylvia Sims, Linzey Cocker, Rosemary Harris

An old magician (Michael Caine) moves into a retirement home where he befriends the 12-year-old son of the couple who run the place. The magician is losing his memory. The boy is obsessed with ghosts. The old man knows he's fading and he's fighting it off, looking back on a life filled with love and regret. The kid knows more about death than most 12-year-olds, and wants to know what comes next. The movie leans toward sweetness at times, and if Caine's cantankerous performance doesn't entirely offset that, he at last makes you not mind too much. 

Going Hollywood (1933)

 

GOING HOLLYWOOD  (1933)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Raoul Walsh

    Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay,

    Stuart Erwin, Ned Sparks, Patsy Kelly

William Randolph Hearst's girlfriend plays a French teacher who quits her job and follows a radio crooner to Hollywood where he's scheduled to make a movie. Bing sings "Temptation", the title tune and a few other things, Marion gets a musical number or two, and Patsy Kelly makes the most of her first feature film role as Marion's Hollywood pal. Surprise highlight: a group called the Radio Rogues, whose vocal impressions include Kate Smith and Crosby rivals Russ Columbo and Rudy Vallee.

Lucky Luke (2009)

 

LUCKY LUKE  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: James Huth

    Jean Dujardin, Sylvie Testud, Melvil Poupaud,

    Michaël Youn, Alexandra Lamy, Daniel Prévost

The president of the United States, facing a tough reelection campaign, dispatches a gunman named Lucky Luke to clean up a place called Daisy Town, where he plans to sink the last spike in the Transcontinental Railroad. An absurdist French spoof on westerns, both spaghetti and traditional, based on a comic book. It plays like a cartoon, sometimes funny, sometimes silly, and usually both at once. (There's even a talking horse.) Calamity Jane, Jesse James and Billy the Kid all show up. They bring their guns. 

The Last Vampyre (1993)

THE LAST VAMPYRE  (1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Tim Sullivan 

    Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke, Roy Marsden,

    Keith Barron, Yolanda Vazquez, Maurice Denham,

    Richard Dempsey, Juliet Aubrey, Jason Hetherington

Sherlock Holmes investigates some mysterious deaths that the local townspeople believe to be the work of a vampire. They think they know who the vampire is, too, but Holmes suspects they're wrong and seeks a more rational solution. Most vampire movies, you know who the vampire is and you're just watching and wondering how many necks he'll bite before he steps out into the sun or gets a wooden stake through the heart. This one's a mystery and keeps you guessing. Jeremy Brett makes a stuffy Sherlock - he played the role on British television for about ten years - and Roy Marsden as the alleged vampire resembles Richard E. Grant just enough to make you wonder what Grant could do as Dracula.