Eve and the Handyman (1961)

Directed by Russ Meyer
My rating: BOMB
IMDb
(DVD, Arrow Films)

Another silent comedy from the early days of Russ Meyer. A blond detective in a trench coat follows around a handyman on his daily routines. He has numerous encounters with naked or nearly naked women with large breasts, and apparently she wants to see if he can resist them all. He does, until the very end, when the two of them have sex (implied by a series of visuals: two train cars connecting, oil wells pumping, rocket taking off). The attempts at comedy are just plain pathetic, and there is even less nudity than normal. Remember, the greatest catch in life is a happy ending.

Bullets or Ballots (1936)

Directed by William Keighley
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Edward G. Robinson manages to save his tough-guy persona by playing an undercover cop in the mob. At first it's unclear whose side he's on, and the script does a good job of misdirection. Bogey has his suspicions all along, and he plays up his mob character to the hilt. Barton MacLane is excellent as the boss who trusts Robinson and defends him from Bogey and others.

Batman (1989)

Directed by Tim Burton
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Tim Burton begins his descent into mainstream re-imaginings with the Batman. It's pre-CGI, so there are actual stunts involving real vehicles and real people, though there is some model work as well. The movie seems to be more interested in Nicholson's Joker than Batman. We get the whole origin of the Joker, at least the physical transformation is made clear, but the transformation of his personality from rather ordinary henchman to maniacal, over-the-top Joker is not so clear. The low points, and there are many, include Nicholson in dance mode while bad 80s Prince music blares from jam boxes and dancing to Prince again as grand marshal of a Gothic City parade. It's downright embarrassing. Keaton is about as stiff as his batsuit.

Flying Leathernecks (1951)

Directed by Nicholas Ray
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

John Wayne commands a rag-tag group of flying marines in the Pacific. His second in command Robert Ryan has a soft heart and often questions the decisions of the tougher Wayne. The pilots wonder who is going to get it next, while trying to get rest or get drunk. I was often reminded of MASH, particularly the Line Chief who had a knack for stealing supplies and even looked a lot like Rizzo from the TV series. Stock footage is used for the battle scenes but it is well edited and flows with the rest of the film. However, the Stateside home scenes with Wayne and his wife are hilariously awful and cliche, luckily they are brief.

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh (1964)

Directed by James Neilson
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Walt Disney)

Vicar Patrick McGoohan preaches by day and smuggles rum by night, using the proceeds to pay back taxes for the poor. In smuggling mode, he wears a scarecrow mask and orders everyone around quite firmly. His main adversary is General Pugh, a stuffy soldier who stoops to burning and pillaging to find his man. The Scarecrow must outwit not only Pugh, but his own men who are tempted to turn him in for a reward. The 3-part television presentation is very episodic, though the recut theatrical version, Dr. Syn Alias the Scarecrow, is also included on the Disney Treasures release which may help alleviate that problem.

The Arizona Raiders (1936)

Directed by James P. Hogan
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Lionsgate)

An unlikely trio get jobs as ranch hands. Buster Crabbe is the Wyoming cowboy with a bad reputation but a good heart. He befriends Tracks Williams, notorious thief and swindler, and young Alonzo Q. Mulhall who has the misfortune to be in love with a young girl on the ranch. Together they get into trouble, romance the girls and save a herd of valuable horses. Zane Grey story suffers from low budget treatment.

They Were Expendable (1945)

Directed by John Ford

My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

John Ford's film of the first Navy PT boats lacks dramatic focus. There are a couple of scenes with the trademark John Ford touch, perfectly framed portraits in black and white, but for the most part it's episodic, including a long, unconvincing romance between John Wayne and Donna Reed. It's basically a series of missions, none of which are very interesting. They sink some Jap freighters, endure strafing from Jap planes and lose a few boats. Some men die, but the characters were so poorly drawn I struggled to remember their names. The ending, apparently based on fact, was as baffling as it was infuriating.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (1996)

Directed by Terry Jones
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Walt Disney)

Modern Disney nonsense about a wealthy Toad who has an obsession with speed. It seems the Weasels want to take over his estate, Toad Hall, and to do so must make him spend all of his money. In it's place they build a giant dog food factory. Luckily Toad has friends like Ratty, Badger and Mole who come to his aid. It occasionally breaks into very bad musical numbers. The Monty Python cast is just plain silly, and not in a good way, prancing around in mouse whiskers and long tails, a mole nose and a toad costume.

The Ritz (1976)

Directed by Richard Lester
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Jack Weston is on the run from his brother-in-law and hides out in The Ritz, a gay paradise in New York City complete with steam room, night club, swimming pool, discotheque and rooms with posters of Marilyn Monroe. The patrons all walk around in nothing but towels and cruise the vast complex for lovers. Rita Moreno is the world's worst nightclub singer. F. Murray Abraham is the flame who can't seem to find a lover no matter how hard he tries. There are ample opportunities for non-PC comedy, but it mostly falls flat. The film rarely leaves the hotel's premises and feels a bit stagnant as a result.

Gone to Ground (1978)

Directed by Kevin James Dobson
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(VHS, Paragon)

Australian film about a young car thief and his car dealer fence. When he starts receiving threatening letters in the mail, the dealer suggests they go to his remote home until things cool down. Soon they are stalked by a sniper. There are also multiple relationship dramas involving his wife, his dealer's wife, his dealer's mistress, his dealer's mistress' boyfriend, etc. It is never explained who is after them or why.

The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)

Directed by Russ Meyer
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Arrow Films)

Russ Meyer's influential "nudie cutie" follows a middle-aged man in a panama hat who leers at large breasts. He is modeled after the French M. Hulot character, a likable goof who is out of step with the modern world. He rides around on his red Schwinn bicycle, the same one Pee Wee Herman had, delivering radioactive isotopes to doctors. He goes to one of them to have a tooth pulled, and the drug causes him to see hypnotic swirls and naked ladies. When he comes out of his trance they are clothed again. This is repeated over and over. There is no dialogue or sound, only music and heavily echoed narration with sexual double entendre.

"G" Men (1935)

Directed by William Keighley
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

There is something not quite right with Jimmy Cagney playing a "good guy", in this case a reformed delinquent turned FBI man. The near-documentary nature of the first half of the film doesn't help matters much. It does pick up near the middle, with Cagney rooting out his old gang in a hotel. However, the code-imposed ending, the bad guys have to get their punishment, ruins what otherwise would have been a mediocre film at best.

The Stalking Moon (1968)

Directed by Robert Mulligan
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Gregory Peck is retiring from the Army, but reluctantly picks up a white woman and her Indian son who have been captured on the same day. He at first just wants to guide them to the nearest railroad stop and send them on their way, but eventually grows fond of them and before you know it are living together on his ranch in New Mexico. Meanwhile, the real Indian father is blazing a trail of blood to reclaim his wife and son. A bit long and Peck is stoic as always, but fantastic scenery and a good showdown make it more than worthwhile.

Tarzan's Hidden Jungle (1955)

Directed by Harold D. Schuster
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Archive Collection)

Gordon Scott's first appearance in the series...but really it is just more of the same. Where does he find weights to keep that bodybuilder physique in the jungle? Evil hunters are after big game, but Tarzan and his animal-worshiping native friends are determined to stop them. There is no Jane, but Vera Miles as a jungle nurse fills in quite nicely. In fact, their relationship is the most interesting thing in the movie, as they would become husband and wife a little over a year after meeting on this set.

Cimarron (1960)

Directed by Anthony Mann
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Glenn Ford and Maria Schell head out to Oklahoma for the Land Rush of 1889. It's a spectacular scene as thousands are lined up across the prairie to make their claim, and surprisingly violent once the race starts. The couple don't get their land, but end up running the local newspaper. Ford is not a newspaperman, but is a crusader for the rights of others, particularly the hated Indians. This unpopular stance gets him into trouble with the locals, including his wife. He leaves, for years at a time, to fight in wars. His wife seems content to wait, and spends the time building up the newspaper and raising their son, who falls in love with an Indian himself. The last third or so of the film, when Ford is mostly absent, concentrates on these less interesting domestic disputes.

White Heat (1949)

Directed by Raoul Walsh
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Cagney and his gang, including his mom, go on the lam after robbing a train. He cooks up an idea to confess to another crime to avoid doing a longer stretch. On the inside, he is befriended by an undercover cop, and together they stage a breakout. The police chase them to a chemical plant, where Cagney goes out in style "on top of the world". His mother fixation would do Hitchcock proud.

La Noire de... (1966)

Directed by Ousmane Sembene
My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, New Yorker Films)

Poorly executed story of black girl from Senegal who is hired to be a maid to a rich couple in France. The girl has very few lines, instead we get constant narration of her inner thoughts. The young French woman who hires her never stops complaining and orders her to make coffee, do the dishes, cook the meals, etc. Eventually the black girl gets fed up and commits an act of desperation that quite simply seems implausible given what we know about her. I think this may have played well on the drive-in circuit with an Ed Wood or Doris Wishman film.

The Law and Jake Wade (1958)

Directed by John Sturges

My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Back-to-basics western with a simple plot: ex-gunfighter Richard Taylor along with his fiance are kidnapped by his old gang lead by Richard Widmark, who wants to be taken to buried loot. They trek through spectacular scenery, playing a tense game of cat-and-mouse along the way, ending up in a creaky ghost town. Widmark has accounted for almost everything, except maybe Comanches. An excellent supporting cast make up his gang, including DeForest Kelley and Henry Silva.

Werckmeister Harmóniák (2000)

Directed by Béla Tarr
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Facets)

Janos is a young postman who quietly goes about his daily routine. He calls everyone in town by Uncle or Aunt, whether related or not. He does take care of his real Uncle, who is a musician and theorist, aging and sick. A rebellion is growing among the locals in the town square. Janos wants nothing to do with it, but is drawn into the role of spy by his Uncle, who holds much power. Meanwhile, a sideshow roles into the town square as well, a grotesque display of a giant dead whale. Janos is fascinated and repulsed, much the same way he might feel about the rebellion.

Kárhozat (1987)

Directed by Béla Tarr
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Facets)

Tarr adopts the style of Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Kubrick and others with long, tracked camera shots. He uses them almost exclusively. After awhile, images of rain, dogs, and dogs in rain seem to dominate. The main character ends up on his hands and knees barking at/with a dog in the final shot. He epitomizes the self-pitying drunk philosopher. He says a lot, but really never says anything. Perhaps that is the point. A girl is involved, but she is emotionally detached and sleeps around. A long sequence takes place in a dance hall with a jazz band playing, while the rain falls outside. In the end, it's Kafka-esque, neo-noir, pseudo-philosophical, anything but original.

The Steagle (1971)

Directed by Paul Sylbert
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(VHS, Charter Entertainment)

Richard Benjamin is a quirky English lit professor with vivid fantasies about playing baseball, among other things. He comes home every day to the suburbs, apparently indifferent to wife Cloris Leachman. It's the early 60s, and JFK comes on the radio to announce the Cuban missile crisis. Benjamin reacts by letting his fantasies come to life. He starts by telling another professor what he really thinks of him. He has an affair with another one. He hops on an airplane an adopts different personalities on a cross-country trip: wealthy gambler, movie producer, the real Andy Hardy. In Vegas he meets up with Chill Wills, who is great as a slightly eccentric ex-movie cowboy.

Saddle the Wind (1958)

Directed by Robert Parrish
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Robert Taylor and John Cassavetes are brothers running a ranch in a peaceful valley. Taylor is an ex-gunman but Cassavetes has got the itch to become one. One day he brings home pretty Julie London intending to marry her. When he confronts a drifter in a bar, partly showing off for London, he kills him in a gunfight. Emboldened by his fast draw, he gets drunk and harasses a family of squatters who show up on their land. Taylor must act fast if he is to save the ranch and his brother. Rod Serling's screenplay fails to get beyond stereotypes of "good brother" versus "bad brother", and Julie London seems to be present to sing the title song and not much else.

Vidas Secas (1963)

Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, New Yorker Films)

Brazilian film about a poor family barely subsisting in a harsh, desert-like environment. The stark black and white photography is accented by a sparse, almost experimental soundtrack. Although I appreciated the artistic statement of the filmmakers, it was anything but a pleasant viewing experience. In particular, animals are shown dead or dying from starvation and thirst, and there is an extended sequence where a dog is shot and dies slowly. As an animal lover the film is heartbreaking and virtually unwatchable.

The Anderson Tapes (1971)

Directed by Sidney Lumet
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Sony/Columbia Pictures)

Sean Connery, recently released from a 10-year prison term, plans a complicated heist of an exclusive New York City apartment building. He calls up his old prison pals and enlists the help of the mob. Meanwhile, the government is recording everything he does on audio and video tapes. The big day arrives and things do not go as planned. Moody electronic soundtrack by Quincy Jones and authentic locations help with atmosphere.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Directed by Raoul Walsh
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Cagney and Bogey are war buddies who return home but can't find a job. Cagney starts running bootlegged liquor, and after a few years controls a giant illegal liquor operation. Bogey plays it smart and eventually takes control after the Wall Street crash breaks Cagney. Forced to drive a cab for a living, the two old friends eventually meet again in a violent showdown. An entertaining, if contrived, film with some great performances by the powerhouse cast.

Panelkapcsolat (1982)

Directed by Béla Tarr
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Facets)

If you can imagine early Fassbinder filming Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage then that was my impression of this effort from Hungarian director Tarr. A couple celebrates their 9th anniversary by bickering, in private and public, with screaming kids in tow. Robi is the bored husband: tired of his job, tired of his tiny apartment, tired of his wife, tired of his kids. His wife is not much happier, when she complains to a friend that they never dance, Tarr follows it up with a long scene at a dance where, you guessed it he dances with someone else but not her. They get home and he is packing up a suitcase to leave, again. Shot in stifling close-ups and gritty black-and-white.

The Song of Sparrows (2008)

Directed by Majid Majidi

My rating: 3.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, E1)

Karim is a middle aged father with 2 children living in a rural area outside Tehran. He works on an ostrich farm, until one of them escapes and he is fired. Luckily, he has a motorcycle and uses it as a taxi to earn money in the big city. Most of the people he meets are hustling for a living, buying and selling large quantities of electronics and appliances, salvaging junk or pulling scams (at one point a passenger does not pay and threatens to call a cop if he is not given change). Karim quickly learns that in order to survive he must become like those around him. In one poignant scene, a little girl burning incense on a busy highway for money charms him, but he does not want to give her too much of his hard earned money. Unable to break a large bill, he drives away. He also begins collecting junk and bringing it home every day. He amasses a huge pile and while digging around it collapses and almost kills him. Forced to stay home and nurse a broken leg, he realizes what the city has done to his soul. A film rich in symbolism and vibrant characters.

The Petrified Forest (1936)

Warner Bros

Directed by Archie Mayo
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Drifter Leslie Howard walks into a remote cafe in the California desert where Bette Davis waits on tables for her father. He's a writer from England hitchhiking across the country, she reads poetry and dreams of Paris, and naturally they fall in love. In walks Bogey and his gangster pals, who take hostages and bring their dreamy talk down to earth. Howard makes a pact with Bogey, one that is justified in his own mind but very questionable in mine. A good film though like many based on plays a bit stagy and very talky.

The Silence (1998)

Directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf

My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, New Yorker Films)

Mood piece from Makhmalbaf about a blind boy who displays an astonishing ability to listen to the world around him. The plot is thin, really nothing more than riding a bus to work each day, with a few tangents when he gets lost following the sound of music. There is some minor conflict with his mother who is hounding him to get money to pay the overdue rent and his boss who is threatening to fire him for being late every day. The boy also has an obsession with Beethoven's Fifth, at least the opening 4 notes of it, which are played incessantly throughout the movie on various instruments. Perhaps I've seen too many Iranian films about the blind recently (this is the third this week), but it was an oddly unmoving experience.

Many Rivers to Cross (1955)

Directed by Roy Rowland

My rating: 1.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Innocuous western/comedy/romance set in old frontier Kentucky. Robert Taylor is the "Kentucky Rifleman", living off the land as a trapper. He runs into some Indians and receives a knife wound. Luckily, he is found by a father and daughter, who take him home to heal. The daughter, played by Eleanor Parker, immediately falls in love and spends most of the rest of the movie trying to get him to marry her, while Taylor tries to avoid it. Some unbelievably strained dialogue, horrible acting by Taylor and Parker, and episodic nature of the story doom this one.

Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police (1939)

Directed by James Hogan

My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Image Entertainment)

John Howard is perhaps the definitive Bulldog Drummond in this very entertaining entry. Drummond is about to be married when an old professor shows up with a map to a treasure hidden in a walled-up passage of his own house. The marriage is delayed and the treasure hunt is on. Drummond and friends end up trapped in an ancient torture chamber, complete with a collapsing ceiling of gothic iron spikes and trick doorways.

Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937)

Directed by James Hogan
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Image Entertainment)

Ray Milland's only appearance as the dapper detective. It's a standard programmer set in an old English mansion constantly enshrouded by fog. Drummond and his sidekick Algy Longworth try to rescue beauty Heather Angel held captive by some counterfeiters. There are numerous hits over the head with candlesticks, sudden black outs, mysterious letters, dead bodies, etc. It's all done with a rather light tone and an occasional comedic touch.