Body of Evidence (1993)

BODY OF EVIDENCE  (1993)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Uli Edel

    Madonna, Willem Dafoe, Joe Mantegna,

    Anne Archer, Julianne Moore, Frank Langella

Lurid, ridiculous courtroom melodrama about a cold-eyed blonde who goes on trial for murder when her wealthy older lover has a heart attack in bed. One of the Material One's periodic attempts to have a movie career, and one of the reasons her movie career never quite took off. The sex scenes aren't even all that interesting, despite such accessories as belts, handcuffs, candle wax and broken glass. Madonna gets naked, of course, but by now, who cares?

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

THE DIRTY DOZEN  (1967)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Robert Aldrich

    Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson,

    John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown,

    Robert Ryan, George Kennedy, Donald Sutherland,

    Richard Jaeckel, Clint Walker, Ralph Meeker

On the eve of the Normandy Invasion, Major Lee Marvin springs a bunch of psychos from the stockade and trains them to go behind enemy lines to take out a castle full of German generals. Classic World War Two action adventure, tough, funny and highly improbable, crackling with wise-guy dialogue and machine-gun fire. If it didn't invent the formula, it at least set the standard for every misfits-on-a-suicidal-mission movie to follow. Bronson, Cassavetes and Sutherland stand out in the gallery of perverts and murderers. 

Boarding Gate (2007)

BOARDING GATE  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Olivier Assayas

    Asia Argento, Michael Madson, Carl Ng,

    Kelly Lin, Alex Descas, Joana Preiss

Murky international thriller with a ragged-looking Asia Argento as a woman who's both up to no good and in over her head. It's effectively two separate films. The first, which lasts 30 or 40 minutes, is a kinky, two-person psychodrama in which Argento and her scumbag boyfriend (Michael Madson) play out the last act in their mutually abusive relationship. Then something happens, Assayas flips a switch, and the action moves from Paris to Hong Kong, with Argento on the run from some people who are trying to kill her. The movie feels about as strung-out as its heroine, but Asia, with her worn beauty, her taut physique, her gun, her cigarettes, her underwear and her tattoos, is enough to hold your attention.

Nashville (1975)

NASHVILLE  (1975)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Robert Altman

    Keith Carradine, Lily Tomlin, Geraldine Chaplin,

    Ronee Blakely, Henry Gibson, Karen Black,

    Michael Murphy, David Hayward, Keenan Wynn,

    Ned Beatty, Shelley Duvall, Scott Glenn,

    Gwen Welles, Barbara Harris, Jeff Goldblum

Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic look at America on the eve of the Bicentennial follows 24 characters whose paths cross and recross over a few summer days in the Country Music Capital of the World. Some are denizens of the music industry. Some are involved in the political campaign of an independent presidential candidate, a phantom whose rhetorical slogans, blasted from loudspeakers, punctuate the film. Others filter in - a drifter, a soldier, a groupie, a waitress, a magician on a three-wheeled motorcycle, a crackpot reporter from the BBC - their disparate lives spinning together, sometimes briefly touching, under Altman's seemingly effortless control. A freewheeling, crazy-quilt satire - funny, exhilarating, annihilating. Altman's masterpiece.

Henry Gibson

(1935-2009)

Topper (1937)

TOPPER  (1937)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Norman Z. McLeod

    Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Roland Young,

    Billie Burke, Alan Mobray, Eugene Pallette

George and Marian Kirby, young, rich, devil-may-care and newly deceased, hang around as ghosts to haunt a stodgy, middle-aged banker named Cosmo Topper. A light, breezy comedy with Grant and Bennett in elegant form as the ghosts, and an agile performance by Young in the role Leo G. Carroll recreated on television.

Ghost (1990)

GHOST  (1990)  ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Jerry Zucker

    Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg

    Tony Goldwyn, Vincent Schiavelli, Gail Boggs

A New York stockbroker gets killed by a mugger and hangs around as ectoplasm long enough to protect his girlfriend from the guy who set him up. The kind of romantic comedy in which true love conquers all, even death, as long as the lovers are young, smart, beautiful, affluent, and played by Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. It's not convincing for a second, even as a fantasy, but it's a perfectly calculated product: slick, funny, violent and transparently manipulative, with a bright, attractive cast and good special effects. It's not "Topper", in other words, but Demi looks great in it, Whoopi has some amusing scenes, and Swayze can't help busting a few skulls, even as a good-guy ghost.

Patrick Swayze

(1952-2009)

Seven Chances (1925)

SEVEN CHANCES  (1925)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢    

    D: Buster Keaton

    Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes,

    Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer

Buster Keaton stands to inherit $7 million, provided he can find a woman to marry him by seven o'clock. When his business partner plants the story in the afternoon paper, an army of would-be brides show up at the church, setting the stage for one of the great movie chases ever. Highlight: Buster, running down a hill ahead of an avalanche, sees the women coming the other way, turns and runs back up the hill, dodging the boulders which then take out his pursuers. The premise is just enough to set off the chase. The chase is awesome.