The Roaring Twenties (1939)

THE ROARING TWENTIES  (1939)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Raoul Walsh

    James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane,

    Gladys George, Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh

Cagney and Bogart play doughboys-turned-bootleggers in a classic Warner Brothers gangster movie that doubles as a thumbnail sketch of American history between the world wars. Award-worthy performance by Gladys George as the tough-talking, gold-hearted saloon girl who keeps an eye on Cagney. The climax, in which Cagney staggers, collapses and expires on the snow-covered steps of a church, is pure gangster-movie ballet. 

Sunshine Cleaning (2009)

SUNSHINE CLEANING  (2009)  ¢ ¢   

    D: Christine Jeffs

    Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin,

    Jason Spevack, Steve Zahn, Clifton Collins Jr., 

    Paul Dooley, Amy Redford    

Annoying, formula chick flick starring Adams and Blunt as sisters who go into business cleaning up crime scenes. Both actresses are very good, and both deserve to be in better movies than this.

Shack Out On 101 (1955)

SHACK OUT ON 101  (1955)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Edward Dein

    Keenan Wynn, Lee Marvin, Terry Moore,

    Frank Lovejoy, Whit Bissell, Jess Barker

A nutty, fast-paced, low-budget thriller from a time when the Cold War was raging and a commie was thought to be hiding under every bed. The setting's a greasy-spoon diner - the "shack" of the title - run by nice-guy World War Two vet Keenan Wynn. Lee Marvin plays a cook called "Slob". Terry Moore's the waitress. The regulars include a watch salesman (Whit Bissell), a professor (Frank Lovejoy) and a few others - all men - who stop by to bicker and banter and ogle the waitress and sample the cherry pie. Who would guess that somebody in this bunch would be engaged in treason, aiming to subvert the American way of life? Not to give anything away, but if you ever end up in an out-of-the-way cafe and you happen to hear the cook's called "Slob", don't order the hamburger.

Rumba (2008)

RUMBA  (2008)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢      

    D: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy

    Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon,

    Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy

Dear Ms. Applebaum,

Here's a movie recommendation. It's a Belgian comedy called "Rumba". It's about a husband and wife who teach at the same elementary school, but whose real passion outside work is dancing. One night they're driving home from a dance competition, which they've won, and there's this guy standing in the middle of the road, hoping to commit suicide by getting run over. They swerve to miss him and get into a terrible wreck. She loses a leg. He loses his memory. All of it. No short-term memory. No long-term memory. No memory. The would-be suicide doesn't get a scratch. The movie goes on from there, and it's hard to describe, but it's the funniest thing I've seen in at least a couple of years. It's deadpan, absurdist, almost entirely physical. A couple of songs and some incidental dialogue, but mostly it's done without words. The same people who made it made a movie a few years ago called "The Iceberg" that I also really liked. They've obviously watched a lot of silent comedy and know what makes it work. It's like Jacques Tati meets Buster Keaton, except in this case, one of them's a girl. I just have a feeling you'd really like it. If it ever comes around your way, check it out and let me know what you think.

Nick   

Big Trouble In Little China (1986)

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA  (1986)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Carpenter

    Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun,

    James Hong, Victor Wong, Kate Burton

Kurt Russell plays a trucker whose rig goes missing in Chinatown. To try to explain this movie in any more detail than that would be futile. Just watch out for the three ninja ghosts with the lampshades on their heads.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007)

PETE SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG  (2007)  

    D: Jim Brown                                                  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

At 90, Pete Seeger might be the world's last optimist, the last living soul who can still sing the folk protest anthems of the '50s and '60s (and before and after) with total conviction and not a trace of cynicism, irony, condescension or disbelief. This documentary chronicles Seeger's long, eventful life - lefty activism at Harvard in the 1930s, riding freights with Woody Guthrie, stints with the Almanac Singers and the Weavers, the HUAC Committee, the blacklist, the causes, the songs, and the abiding commitment to social justice (and audience participation) that drives his work. Meanwhile, an extensive gallery of witnesses testify to his enduring influence on multiple generations of musicians. And he's still at it, showing up now and then with a guitar or banjo, his voice mostly gone, but his infectious spirit and unmatched ability to get a crowd singing together still intact. "You can't say there's no hope," he says at one point. "You've got to keep trying." And then it's time to pick up the banjo and play another song.

Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE  (1978)  ¢ ¢ ¢    

    D: James Fargo

    Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis,

    Ruth Gordon, Beverly D'Angelo, Bill McKinney,

    John Quade, Dan Vadis, William O'Connell,

    Hank Worden, George Chandler, Walter Barnes

You get a clue about what kind of movie this is going to be in the opening shot. Clint Eastwood pulls up in a pickup truck, unwraps a stick of chewing gum, and throws the wrapper out the window. It's a throwaway gesture for a throwaway film - the least substantial piece of work in Eastwood's career, unless you count its sequel, "Any Which Way You Can". Clint plays Philo Beddoe, a bare-knuckles fighter living in a trailer park with an orangutan named Clyde, next door to his buddy Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville's foul-mouthed mother (Ruth Gordon). The story, as much as there is one, has Philo, Clyde and Orville hitting the road, with Philo trying to track down a cold-eyed country singer (Sondra Locke), and there's a lot of beer-drinking, and some fighting, and they're being chased by two idiot cops and a gang of morons on motorcycles calling themselves the Black Widows, and everybody gets laid eventually, even Clyde. If it were any more disposable, it wouldn't exist, but it does play into Eastwood's preoccupation with surrogate families and his inclination to subvert the conventions of heroism. Sometimes it doesn't even look scripted - "loose" is the operative word - and everybody seems to be improvising their scenes around Clyde. So, yeah, you could say there's not much going on here. It's undemanding, good-natured, unpretentious, and goes real good with a six-pack. If you happen to unwrap a stick of gum while you're watching it, just throw the wrapper on the floor.

John Quade

(1938-2009)