New York, I Love You (2009)

NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU  (2009)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Fatih Aikin, Yvan Attal, Randall Balsmeyer,
    Mira Nair, Allen Hughes, Shunji Iwai,
    Wen Jiang, Shekhar Kapur, Joshua Marston,
    Natalie Portman, Brett Ratner
    C: Natalie Portman, Andy Garcia, Orlando Bloom,
    Hayden Christensen, Christina Ricci, Maggie Q,
    Ethan Hawke, James Caan, Julie Christie,
    John Hurt, Shia LaBeouf, Chris Cooper,
    Robin Wright Penn, Eli Wallach, Cloris Leachman,
    Irfan Khan, Anton Yelchin, Bradley Cooper
A follow-up to "Paris Je T'aime", a collection of short films by different directors, all dealing in some way with love (or sex) and relationships, and all set in New York. The stories are slight. Some are just fragments, a moment or two long. Sometimes they overlap. More often they don't. With maybe a few exceptions, there isn't much going on in them that's specific to the location. Characters like these could be doing essentially the same things in any big city in the world. Maybe that's the point. But it leaves you with a sense that the filmmakers missed something, too: the elephant in the room, New York City. Highlights: Cloris Leachman and Eli Wallach as an elderly couple out for a walk, a cross-cultural piece about a pair of diamond traders played by Natalie Portman and Irfan Khan, and two twisted jokes that play out around people smoking cigarettes, one starring Chris Cooper and Robin Wright Penn, the other with Maggie Q and Ethan Hawke.

Paris Je T'aime (2006)

PARIS JE T'AIME  (2006)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Tom Tykwer, Bruno Podalydès, Gurinder Chadha,
    Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles, 
    Daniela Thomas, Christopher Doyle, Isabel Coixet, 
    Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuarón,
    Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard Lagravenese,
    Vincenzo Natali, Wes Craven, Frédéric Aubertin,
    Gérard Depardieu, Alexander Payne
    C: Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Juliette Binoche,
    Willem Dafoe, Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal,
    Emily Mortimer, Elijah Wood, Ben Gazzara,
    Gena Rowlands, Gérard Depardieu, Bob Hoskins,
    Marianne Faithfull, Fannny Ardant, Rufus Sewell,
    Ludivine Sagnier, Miranda Richardson, Olga Kurylenko
Vignettes, all dealing in some way with love, each made by a different director and set in a different neighborhood in the City of Light. They run about five minutes each, and like any collection of short stories, they vary widely. Some don't really go anywhere and aren't meant to. Some are just little jokes. Some are unexpectedly moving. Picking a favorite could be a challenge. There's Steve Buscemi in a Coen Brothers piece about a tourist in a Metro station. An aching reflection on loss by Nobuhiro Suwa, with Juliette Binoche as a grieving mother and Willem Dafoe as a cowboy. A tongue-in-cheek vampire story by Vincenzo Natali, starring Elijah Wood. A droll segment by Wes Craven, with Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer as an estranged couple traipsing through Pére Lachaise Cemetery and getting a much-needed comic assist from the ghost of Oscar Wilde. And a tragedy by Oliver Schmitz about bad luck, two cups of coffee, a rescue worker and a Nigerian parking-lot attendant. Many famous faces appear, but the real star is the world's most romantic city. If you've ever spent time in Paris and thought you might want to go back someday, this is a vicarious way to do that. 

The Manitou (1978)

THE MANITOU  (1978)  ¢ ¢
    D: William Girdler
    Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Michael Ansara,
    Stella Stevens, Burgess Meredith, Ann Sothern
A good cast trashes its way through some foolish hocus pocus about a woman who checks into a hospital to get a tumor looked at and learns she has an ancient Indian medicine man growing out of her neck. Curtis and Stevens play psychics, and Strasberg's the unlucky girl with the growth. During the climactic confrontation with the monster, she doesn't even try to keep a straight face.

Michael Ansara

(1922-2013)

The Sting (1973)

THE STING  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: George Roy Hill
    Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw,
    Eileen Brennan, Charles Durning, Ray Walston,
    Harold Gould, Dana Elcar, Sally Kirkland
An Oscar-winning caper starring Newman and Redford as con artists out to take down a cold-blooded high roller played by Robert Shaw. A slick piece of work all the way, from the painted titles to the intricate plotting to the Scott Joplin music to Henry Bumstead's Depression-era art direction. It's all style, really, but when it's done this well, with these guys in front of the camera, style's enough.

Eileen Brennan

(1932-2013)

Searching For Sugar Man (2012)

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Malik Bendjelloul
A documentary that plays like a mystery, about a singer-songwriter from Detroit named Rodriguez, who released two critically acclaimed albums in the early 1970s and then abruptly disappeared. The albums went nowhere commercially, but somebody slipped the music into Apartheid-era South Africa, where it really took off, under the radar and beyond the reach of the repressive minority government. Meanwhile, rumors surfaced that Rodriguez had killed himself on stage, either with a gun or by setting himself on fire, but nobody really knew anything about him. Two guys decided to find out, and did, and this movie is the story of their quixotic quest, and more than that, the story of Rodriguez, who's had a career arc so improbable, it plays like fiction. You do wonder about his South African fan base, which appears to be 100 percent white, and while his three daughters are interviewed extensively, their mothers conspicuously are not. Numerous witnesses wonder out loud about why Rodruguez failed to gain any kind of following in the U.S. By the time the movie's over, and you've spent close to 90 minutes listening to his songs, you'll wonder about that, too.

Of Mice and Men (1939)

OF MICE AND MEN  (1939)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Lewis Milestone
    Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field,
    Charles Bickford, Bob Steele, Noah Beery Jr.
For all the monster movies he appeared in over the years, Lon Chaney Jr. gave his most frightening performance as Lennie, the simple-minded giant, in John Steinbeck's enduring pastoral tragedy. Lennie and his pal George (Burgess Meredith) are itinerant ranch hands, moving from job to job during the Depression and dreaming about someday owning a little spread of their own. But Lennie's childlike mind and outsized strength always land him in trouble, and sooner or later, he and George are forced to move on. Other screen adaptations have come along since, and Nicol Williamson, Randy Quaid and John Malkovich have all taken on the role, but none of them have matched the scary simplicity Chaney brought to Lennie. Throw in Milestone's direction, Aaron Copland's music and Meredith doing some of his best work, too, and this version is pretty much definitive. 

Looper (2012)

LOOPER  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Rian Johnson
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt,
    Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo, Paul Dano
In the present (according to most people), time travel hasn't been invented yet. But 30 years in the future (according to this movie), it will have been. To take advantage of that phenomenon, the gangsters of the future (like Jeff Daniels) hire specialized assassins called loopers (like Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to hang out in the present (30 years ago their time) and perform hits on people who have been sent back in time for the sole purpose of being killed and disposed of. Confused yet? Then think what it's like for Gordon-Levitt when he comes face-to-face with his latest target, who turns out to be himself, only 30 years older and played by Bruce Willis. As Willis explains to Gordon-Levitt over coffee and eggs at their favorite greasy-spoon diner, trying to explain how this time-travel stuff works would take way too long, so periodically director Rian Johnson cuts to the chase, so an annoying little kid (played by Pierce Gagnon) can show off his telekinetic powers, and many high-powered guns can be fired. Personally, I wish they had taken a little more time to explain the time-travel stuff. I'm not sure it all adds up. But Willis, looking a little more solidly middle-aged than he has up till now, can still gun down the bad guys (whatever time zone they're from), and Gordon-Levitt, playing the killer who will someday be Bruce, does a pretty fair Bruce Willis impersonation.