Falling Down (1993)

FALLING DOWN  (1993)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Joel Schumacher

    Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey,

    Tuesday Weld, Rachel Ticotin, Lois Smith,

    Frederic Forrest, Michael Paul Chan

Michael Douglas, sporting the least fashionable haircut and wardrobe in North America, plays a laid-off defense engineer who snaps one day during the morning commute, abandons his car on a traffic-clogged freeway, and decides to walk home through some of the meanest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. A violent, live-action cartoon, a tense, comical, heat-crazed variation on the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie "The Swimmer", and a pointedly bleak commentary on what some would view as the death of the American Dream. Despite some scathing reviews on its theatrical release, it's a terrific piece of pulp filmmaking: primitive, simplistic and horrifying.

Joel Schumacher

(1939-2020)

Midsommar (2019)

MIDSOMMAR  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Ari Aster

    Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Vilhelm Blomgren

    William Jackson Harper, Will Poulter, Ellora Torchia,

    Archie Madekwe, Isabelle Grill, Gunnel Fred

I was going to start this off by saying that "Midsommar" is a dark movie, which is true, except that most of it takes place in broad daylight. It's about some American grad students who get invited to observe and take part in a summer solstice celebration in a small community in northern Sweden. At first, it all seems idyllic. They're welcomed with open arms (and mushrooms). But then things start to get, well, dark. You know the old saying that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is? Believe it. The characters are more like movie types than real grad students, but Florence Pugh, as the only female in the group, has a kind of Kate Winslet quality about her, and the script does a nice job of capturing the way people in testy relationships try to evade and manipulate each other. The movie won't transport you out of your seat necessarily, but it's creepy enough. Just be careful where you urinate. And stay away from the tea. 

Hudson Hawk (1991)

HUDSON HAWK  (1991)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Michael Lehmann

    Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, Andie MacDowell,

    James Coburn, Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard

Bruce Willis co-wrote this alleged caper comedy about a cat burglar who gets out of prison and immediately goes back to work stealing priceless Da Vinci artifacts. You know how some movies get a lot of bad ink, and then you see them and they turn out to be better than you expected? That's not the case with "Hudson Hawk". It's at least as bad as its reputation, and that might be understating it. Grant and Bernhard go way over the top as the villains, and even they're not any fun. One thing you'll see in this movie and nowhere else: the pope trying to adjust his TV so he can watch "Mr. Ed". 

Joker (2019)

JOKER  (2019)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Todd Phillips

    Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz,

    Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Shea Wigham

The darkest origin story ever, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the demented, tormented Joker. It's an extraordinary performance, a sort of BASE jump into the psyche of a character who's being ripped apart. Robert De Niro appears as a late-night talk-show host (shades of "The King of Comedy"), and there are references to "Taxi Driver" and Charlie Chaplin, but the ticking time bomb at the core of it all is Phoenix, dancing at the edge of the abyss, a grotesque mirror image of the madness he sees all around him: Travis Bickle for the 21st century. 

Naked Lunch (1991)

NAKED LUNCH  (1991)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: David Cronenberg

    Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm,

    Julian Sands, Roy Scheider, Monique Mecure

David Cronenberg's eye-filling, downbeat hallucination about a writer and his relationships with his wife, his friends, his work, his ambivalent sexual orientation, his typewriter and his drugs. Watching this is like crawling around in William S. Burroughs' skull, a mystifying, paranoid, junked-up landscape inhabited by giant bugs, organic typewriters and even a talking asshole. It's not a world you'd want to spend a lot of time in, but fans of Burroughs and weird cinema might want to take a look. Weller gives a wry, deadpan performance in the Burroughs role, while others stand in for Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Paul and Jane Bowles.

Ian Holm

(1931-2020)

The Merry Frinks (1934)

THE MERRY FRINKS  (1934)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Alfred E. Green

    Aline McMahon, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert

    Allen Jenkins, Helen Lowell, Joan Wheeler,

    Frankie Darro, Ivan Lebedeff, Harold Huber

An ensemble comedy about an oddball family trying to get by without killing each other while keeping the landlord at bay. It's like "You Can't Take It With You", only more dysfunctional, and the humor has a distinctly wicked edge. Aline McMahon, Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert, who mostly made their mark in supporting roles, get a little more screen time here, and make the most of it. 

Machete Maidens Unleashed (2010)

MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED  (2010)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Mark Hartley

An entertaining look at exploitation filmmaking in the Philippines in the '60s, '70s and '80s, when American producers crossed the Pacific to grind out movies with titles like "Vampire Hookers", "Women In Cages" and "Beast of Blood": horror and action pictures notable primarily for their insane violence, transparent cheapness and frequently topless women. It's worth tracking down, if only to help you decide whether or not you'd actually want to watch one of those films. They're not for everybody, that's for sure, but there's an inherent goofiness about them that's kind of fun. Plus topless women. Witnesses include Jack Hill, Joe Dante, Pam Grier, Dick Miller and (inevitably) Roger Corman, but it's the clips that tell you everything you need to know. And did I mention the topless women?