Before I Forget (2009)

BEFORE I FORGET  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jeff Kanew
    Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas at 92, in a one-man show he wrote and performed several years after a debilitating stroke. There's an element of movie-star vanity in this, but it's also a revealing (and not always flattering) self-portrait by a guy who's been acting in films longer than most of us can remember. At an age when a lot of folks are doing well to be breathing, Douglas isn't just still on his feet, he's dancing. He even throws in a little homemade verse now and then, though the odds he'll be named poet laureate any time soon are probably not too good. 

The 2014 Scobie Awards

Picture: "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Actor: Ian McDiarmid, "37 Days"
Actress: Juliette Lewis, "Kelly & Cal"
Supporting Actor: Bill Nighy, "Pride"
Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, "Boyhood"
Ensemble: "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Cameo: Jenny Agutter, 
               "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"
Director: Matthew Warchus, "Pride"
Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto, "The Homesman"
Musical Score: Bill Frisell, "The Great Flood"
Compilation: "Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen"
Foreign Language Film: "A Coffee In Berlin"
B Movie: "3 Days To Kill"
Documentary: "The Square"
Revival: "Northern Lights"
Title Sequence: "Fury"
Trailer: "Rocks In My Pockets"
Print Ad: "The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears"
Career Achievement Award: Tom Courtenay

The Night of the Generals (1967)

THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS  (1967)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Anatole Litvak
    Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay,
    Donald Pleasance, Charles Gray, Philippe Noiret,
    Joanna Pettet, Coral Browne, Christopher Plummer,
    Gordon Jackson, Harry Andrews, Sabine Sun
The mystery starts with the murder of a prostitute in Warsaw in 1942. There are two clues to the murder: the ghoulish manner of the woman's death - she was stabbed viciously and repeatedly - and a witness who caught a glimpse of a uniform through a crack in a door - the man leaving the scene of the crime was a German general. An intelligence officer (Omar Sharif) quickly identifies three generals whose whereabouts are unaccounted for on the night of the murder, but before his investigation can get anywhere, he's conveniently promoted and transferred to Paris. Two years later, he's still in Paris, and coincidentally, so are all three generals, when another bar girl turns up murdered in exactly the same way as the first one. Can Colonel Sharif solve the case before the Allies retake the city, or will the hooker-stabbing general get away again? The mystery's not much of a mystery after a while, but the narrative holds your interest, raising questions repeatedly about the relative significance of a single murder when mass murder's the order of the day. In fact, the investigation that begins with Sharif in Warsaw survives its original investigator and goes on long after the war.  Most of the Germans are played by Brits. Maurice Jarre's haunting, martial score is one of his best. O'Toole, playing the youngest and maddest of the generals, gives his most rigidly contained (and least expressive) performance.

The Spectacular Now (2013)

THE SPECTACULAR NOW  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: James Ponsoldt
    Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson,
    Jennifer Jason Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Young love in all its sweet, naive, intense, despairing, blissed-out, torturous confusion. Add alcohol and stir.

Guns, Girls and Gangsters (1959)

GUNS, GIRLS AND GANGSTERS  (1959)  ¢ ¢
    D: Edward L. Cahn
    Mamie Van Doren, Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef,
    Grant Richards, Elaine Edwards, John Baer, Paul Fix
B-movie bombshell Mamie Van Doren gets involved in an armored-car robbery. Lee Van Cleef plays her convict boyfriend whose escape from San Quentin could gum up the works. Portentous narration keeps you up to date as the story unfolds, and Mamie's mountainous rack figures prominently in the mise-en-scène, reminding you why movies like this got made in the first place. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Wes Anderson
    Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham,
    Jude Law, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe,
    Adrien Brody, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton,
    Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Harvey Keitel,
    Mathieu Amalric, Léa Seydoux, Tom Wilkinson,
    Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bob Balaban
This crackpot, picture-postcard, storybook movie takes place in a quaint, mountainous province in Eastern Europe called Zubrowka. That Zubrowka doesn't exist, has never existed, except as the name of some Polish vodka, is beside the point, or maybe it is the point, whatever. Figuring into the story (in no particular order) are a dead matriarch, a contested will, a priceless painting, a wall safe, a set of brass knuckles, several tiny cakes, a fake mustache, a birthmark in the shape of Mexico, a prison break, war, border guards, guns, romantic poetry, a plate of mush, four severed fingers, a dead cat, perfume, trains, monks' robes, cable cars, a pair of skis, a sled, flirting, true love, fingernail polish, a young man's curiosity, an old man's memory, and the fabled establishment of the title, a once grand luxury hotel. I don't know how else to describe it, really. Wes Anderson wrote and directed the thing, and it's his best movie yet, a movie nobody else could dream up, let alone pull off. There's not a single wrong note, even in the yodeling. 

The 10 Best Movies of 2014

THE TEN BEST:

"The Grand Budapest Hotel"

"Pride"

"37 Days"

"A Coffee In Berlin"

"The Imitation Game"

"The Homesman"

"The Square"

"The Great Flood"

"Lucy"

"The Wipers Times"

TAKE FIVE:

"The Monuments Men"

"Under the Skin"

"Snowpiercer"

"The Theory of Everything"

"A Most Wanted Man"

SECRET TREASURES:

"We Are the Best!"

"In Order of Disappearance"

"Tokyo Waka"

"Kelly & Cal"

GUILTY PLEASURES:

"300: Rise of an Empire"

"Sin City: A Dame To Kill For"

"St. Vincent"

"3 Days To Kill"

BACK ON THE BIG SCREEN:

"Northern Lights"

"Radio Days"

"J'Accuse"

"Pandora's Box"

FOUR FROM THE VIDEO STORE:

"Way Out West"

"The Fairy"

"Act of Violence"

"The Birth of the Tramp"

CATCH IT IF YOU CAN:

"Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen"