Zachariah (1971)

ZACHARIAH  (1971)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: George Englund

    John Rubenstein, Don Johnson, Pat Quinn,

    William Challee, Elvin Jones, Doug Kershaw,

    Dick Van Patten, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez

What if there were electric guitars on the frontier? An existential rock-&-roll western starring Rubenstein and Johnson as gunfighters who join an outlaw gang played by Country Joe and the Fish. Belle Starr turns up, too, played archly by Pat Quinn, and the boys both dally a little, but in Englund's West the men are men and mostly have eyes for each other. If that all sounds a bit strange, wait till you see the movie. The expression "one of a kind" was invented for pictures like this.

Invictus (2009)

INVICTUS  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Clint Eastwood

    Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tony Kgoroge

    Patrick Mofokeng, Matt Stern, Julian Lewis Jones

There's a moment early on in "Invictus" that has nothing to do with anything else in the movie, that captures what the picture's about in a single shot. It's when Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the newly elected president of South Africa, looks at his reflection in the mirror as he's about to shave. The lower half of his face is covered with lather, so that the face staring back at him is effectively half black and half white. The film is about Mandela's heroic effort to heal South Africa's racial division in the wake of the country's shift to majority rule. He did that in part by backing the national rugby team - long a symbol of white domination - in its unlikely quest to win the world title in a tournament to be held, conveniently, in South Africa. It makes for an exciting, satisfying sports movie, and a somewhat less satisfying political one. There's some obvious exposition in Anthony Peckham's script, and while Mandela's troubled family life is alluded to, the incidental imperfections that might make him seem a little less saintly tend to get lost. To be fair, it's a tricky act to pull off. Mandela, now in his 90s, is justifiably revered, not just in Africa, but worldwide. And from a storytelling perspective, the rugby competition, with its clear-cut drama and action on the field, is the easy part. Of course, on an emotional level, that's the part that really engages the viewer. And as the less exciting part of the movie makes clear, that's something Mandela understood.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

ELMER GANTRY  (1960)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Richard Brooks

    Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy,

    Shirley Jones, Dean Jagger, Hugh Marlowe,

    Patti Page, Edward Andrews, John McIntire

An itinerant pitchman with a carnival hustler's charm and a rare talent for b.s. gives up liquor and women, at least temporarily, when he cons his way into a traveling revival show. Hard-hitting drama based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, with Lancaster in peak form as the seductive, hell-raising Gantry. Trained as an acrobat, with an unerring sense of movement and timing, Lancaster might be the least spontaneous actor in movie history, but it's hard to imagine anybody else taking a serious role this far over the top with such impeccable control. When he exclaims to a tent-show crowd, with a trademark flashing of teeth, that he's "seen the devil plenty of times," he delivers the line with such demonic glee, you believe he's not only made Satan's acquaintance, but enjoyed every sinful second of it. Jean Simmons plays the revival show's star attraction, a character modeled on Aimee Semple McPherson, and the future Mrs. Partridge won an Oscar for her role as a hooker with an old grudge and a plan to exact some serious personal revenge.

Jean Simmons

(1929-2010)

Daisy Kenyon (1947)

DAISY KENYON  (1947)  ¢ ¢ ¢  

    D: Otto Preminger

    Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews,

    Henry Fonda, Ruth Warrick

Joan Crawford plays a woman torn between two men: a married lawyer played by Dana Andrews and a G.I. played by Henry Fonda. Neither of them seems entirely trustworthy. These days, she'd probably just get on with her life and tell them both to take a hike, but apparently that wasn't an option for Joan Crawford in 1947. What's a girl to do?

Paranormal Activity (2009)

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY  (2009)  ¢   

    D: Oren Peli

    Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat,

    Mark Fredrichs, Ashley Palmer

The camera verité gimmick unleashed by "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 always had limited potential, and with "Paranormal Activity", it's really run out of gas. This time, it's the story of Micah and Katie, a young couple living in a haunted house. (As it turns out, it's Katie who's haunted.) But Micah has a video camera, see, and he's obsessive about filming everything, so that's the point of view you've got through the whole movie. You don't get to know much about the characters, and as the picture goes on, you realize you don't really want to. It's not that Sloat and Featherston do a bad job playing them. It's that with no help at all from the script, and not much in the way of personality to distinguish them, Micah and Katie as characters are flat-out boring. You don't ever find out what's going on, either. Ghosts? Demons? Madness? The last few seconds are quite creepy, but by then it's a case of much too little, way too late.

The 10 Best Movies of 2009

THE TEN BEST:

"In the Loop"

"O'Horten"

"Still Walking"

"Captain Abu Raed"

"Rumba"

"North Face"

"Everlasting Moments"

"Inglourious Basterds"

"The Young Victoria"

"Coraline"

SECRET TREASURES:

"Absurdistan"

"Flame and Citron"

"The Limits of Control"

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"Zombieland"

"Pirate Radio"

"Antichrist"

BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN:

"The Swimmer"

"Betty Blue"

"The Night of the Hunter"

"Never Give a Sucker an Even Break"

FOUR FROM THE VIDEO STORE:

"Ben-Hur" (1925)

"Top Hat"

"Intermission"

"The Long Night"

WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR:

"Paranormal Activity"

In the Loop (2009)

IN THE LOOP  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢   

    D: Armando Iannucci

    Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison,

    Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky, Gina McKee,

    James Gandolfini, David Rasche, Enzo Cilenti

Political underlings on both sides of the Atlantic deceive, insult, seduce and double-deal their way to a war resolution at the U.N. A merciless, warp-speed black comedy laced with so much inventive, laugh-out-loud profanity that one viewing, or even two or three, might not be enough. The game's the thing for these characters, and they're all juiced on playing it, with the possible exception of James Gandolfini as a medal-heavy Army general, the only guy in the room who actually knows something about war. You'd like to think wars don't really get started this way. But then there's the war in Iraq . . .