The World, The Flesh And The Devil (1959)

A Pennsylvanian miner (Harry Belafonte), who is black, is trapped underground for over a week due to a cave in. When he finally manages to break free and escape, he finds a completely deserted city. Old newspaper headlines announce the cause ..... a nuclear war! He heads to New York City, which is also deserted, where he nearly goes crazy out of loneliness. Then he discovers a girl (Inger Stevens), who is white, and they bond but their obvious attraction to each other is hampered by the unspoken racial tension (this is 1959). But when a third survivor (Mel Ferrer) enters the picture, it can no longer be ignored. Based on the novel THE PURPLE CLOUD by M.P. Shiel, the well intentioned film feels like a padded out TWILIGHT ZONE episode. Despite being shot in CinemaScope, the B&W film has that flat TV look about it. Belafonte is noble, Stevens is neurotic and Ferrer is dastardly and their characterizations don't (or aren't allowed to) go much further. The film's ambiguous ending is unsatisfying, we're not sure if it's signifying a "we are all brothers under the skin" ending or a "menage a trois ending. Directed by Ranald MacDougall (QUEEN BEE) with Miklos Rozsa's score whipping up a frenzy.

Night Train To Munich (1940)

A young Czech girl (Margaret Lockwood) escapes from a German concentration camp and joins her scientist father (James Harcourt), now a refugee, in England. But when they are kidnapped by German agents and sent back to Germany, a British agent (Rex Harrison) volunteers to go undercover in Germany and retrieve them. Comparisons to Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES from two years earlier are inevitable. In addition to sharing the same leading lady (Lockwood), Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne play the same characters they played in the Hitchcock film though they're nowhere near as amusing this time around. Add to that that both films have train settings and Brits attempting to foil Nazi plans, well..... If one doesn't dwell on the somewhat improbable plot too much, it's a first rate thriller. The director Carol Reed keeps pushing his movie faster and faster (with splashes of humor along the way) until the nail biting chase and cable car finale. The young Harrison is enormously appealing and Paul Henreid makes for a credible double crossing Gestapo agent. With Felix Aylmer and Roland Culver.

Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny (2007)

When three fugitives on the run from the law find themselves stranded in a desolate area, their leader (Patti LuPone) suggests building a city devoted to vice and pleasure on the site. The word gets out and the new city attracts many including a prostitute (Audra McDonald) and an Alaskan lumberjack (Anthony Dean Griffey) but the city doesn't deliver what it promises. After the town survives a hurricane threat, it thrives but only because of corruption. This anti-capitalist 1930 opera with libretto and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill is a very theatrical piece and this Los Angeles City Opera production was tepidly received (though a recording of it won two Grammys) and it's flaws are only embellished on film. It's a stripped down production with nil production values so the weight of the show falls on the shoulders of its performers though they seem strait jacketed by Gary Halvorson's inflexible direction. On the stage, a superb singing voice may be sufficient to overcome a lack of presence but poor Griffey suffers the most by the camera's eye. Overweight, pasty faced and sweating, he hardly conjures up the image of a lumberjack. Where's Nathan Gunn when you need him? With Donnie Ray Albert, Robert Worle and Mel Ulrich.

Moulin Rouge (1952)

It's Paris in 1890 and the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Jose Ferrer) spends his nights drowning himself in Cognac and drawing the dancers at the slightly disreputable but exciting Moulin Rouge nightclub. A childhood accident prevented his legs from healing properly leaving him with the torso of an adult but the legs of a small child, so he is very self conscious about his misshapen appearance. John Huston's film of Toulouse-Lautrec's life is one of the highpoints in the use of color in cinema. Beautifully shot in three strip Technicolor by Oswald Morris (FIDDLER ON THE ROOF), the Moulin Rouge sequences with its eye popping color design and costumes, the exciting smoky atmosphere and superb dance sequences (equaled only by Jean Renoir's FRENCH CAN-CAN) make the film worthwhile. Sadly, the highly fictionalized narrative is pretty conventional and uninteresting focusing more on Toulouse-Lautrec's alleged love life than on his Art. Ferrer's dour performance doesn't help either. The film's acting honors go to Colette Marchand (a dancer/choreographer who made only three feature films) as a duplicitous prostitute who uses him, a performance impressive enough to have gotten her a supporting actress Oscar nomination. Shockingly, not one of its seven Oscar nominations were for Morris's striking cinematography. With Zsa Zsa Gabor, who's not bad though her dubbed singing voice seems all wrong emanating from her, Suzanne Flon, Theodore Bikel, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Jill Bennett, Muriel Smith and Katharine Kath as La Goulue.

Carnival In Costa Rica (1947)

As an arranged marriage is prepared between two Costa Rican families, the intended groom (Cesar Romero) arrives home with an American girlfriend (Celeste Holm) while the intended bride (Vera-Ellen) finds herself attracted to an American coffee buyer (Dick Haymes). Directed by Gregory Ratoff (1939's INTERMEZZO). With the exception of Rodgers and Hammerstein's STATE FAIR (1945), 20th Century Fox never had much luck with their forties musicals. They were usually colorful, often gaudy, Technicolor musicals set in Argentina, Rio or Havana; this time it was Costa Rica's turn. Not a memorable song in the bunch (music by Ernesto Lecuona, lyrics by Harry Ruby), not even a decent dance number unless you count Vera-Ellen's twirling and bouncing. Just the usual romantic mix ups and misunderstandings till the "they all lived happily ever after" wrap up. The appeal of the crooner Haymes, so popular at the time, is lost on me and Holm is miscast as a ditzy blonde. With Anne Revere (wasted), J. Carrol Naish, Barbara Whiting and Leonide Massine (who also did the choreography).

Don Jon (2013)

A young Lothario (Joseph Gordon Levitt, who also wrote and directed) has no problems scoring with the ladies. But the real thing doesn't satisfy him as much as watching the pornography he's addicted to. Even after making love to a beautiful woman, he'll slip out of bed and go to his laptop to get off on porn. Then he falls in love with Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) and tries to change .... but can he? Whether starring in big summer blockbusters or quirky indie films, Joseph Gordon Levitt has consistently been one of the most intriguing and appealing young actors on the film scene for the past several years. As a working class Italian-American (the family Sunday dinner scenes are priceless!), Gordon Levitt doesn't condescend to his "Guido", winking at us how much smarter and better he is than the character. He invests Jon with a sort of guileless innocence, a stud muffin who goes with all sincerity to confession every week to be absolved of his porn addiction ... only to do it all over again. Unlike most romantic comedies, nothing is tied up in a neat little ribbon and at the end its characters still struggling a day at a time, even as some of them can't see their own flaws. Johansson is sensational here, is there a sexier young actress working in movies right now? You can see why Gordon Levitt pursues her when she refuses to be another conquest. The sadness is that her expectations are just as unrealistic as his are. The cast is wonderful: Julianne Moore as the bruised older woman who attempts to mentor the protagonist, Tony Danza and Glenne Headly (where has she been?) as his perfectly matched mismatched parents and also Anne Hathaway, Channing Tatum and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Apres Lui (2007)

After her son (Adrien Jolivet) is killed in an automobile accident, a woman (Catherine Deneuve) becomes obsessed with his best friend (Thomas Dumerchez) who was driving the car on the fatal night. Her behavior gets more irrational as she attempts to control his life. Directed by Gael Morel (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Christophe Honore), this is a rather unpleasant film. As Deneuve's character begins to fall apart, it's acknowledged by the other characters around her but no one seems to care enough or have sense enough to do something about it. An attorney (Penelope Puymirat) suggests psychiatric intervention but it's never acted upon. So what we're left with is a portrait of a woman spinning out of control and while Deneuve's performance is just fine, ultimately it becomes an exercise in tedium as we're left without any insight into her breakdown. Perhaps a little more background on her relationship with her son may have helped but there's only one scene with him before his death. Still, as I said, Deneuve does some fine work here and fans of the actress should certainly check it out for her performance. With Guy Marchand and Elodie Bouchez.

The Last Voyage (1960)

An explosion in a boiler room aboard a luxury liner sailing for Japan eventually causes the ship to begin to sink. While the ship's Captain (George Sanders) ponders his options, the ship's surviving engineer (Edmond O'Brien) attempts to save what's left of his crew and a husband (Robert Stack) desperately tries to free his wife (Dorothy Malone) who's trapped under a steel beam ... and time is running out for all of them. This almost unbearably intense adventure is a forerunner of those star studded "disaster" movies of the 1970s. However, unlike many of those inflated multi character films, this is a lean and taut piece of cinema that concentrates on a few as characters as possible with much attention paid to the mechanics of the sinking ship. No CGI, minimal special effects, the film has a quasi documentary feel to it. Except for very brief music cues at the beginning and end of the film, there's no underscore. Adding to the realism is that it's not a set, it's a real ship (the Isle De France) that's being sunk and the cameras are close enough so that we can see it's the actors, not stuntmen, who are undergoing the trauma. Produced by the husband and wife team of Virginia and Andrew L. Stone with Andrew directing his own original script while Virginia did the film editing. With Jack Kruschen and Woody Strode, who's a real standout here.

The King Of Kings (1927)

The man known as Jesus Christ (H.B. Warner) is a threat to the power ..... well, why go any further. You all know the story. Cecil B. DeMille's epic tale of the last weeks of Christ's life before his crucifixion is an over reverent, crudely made but dramatically effective rendering. Using mainly quotations from the Bible as intertitles, DeMille manages to be both tiresomely pompous and extravagantly entertaining. While the basic story itself is so overly familiar that there's not much one can do with it or to it, DeMille spruces it up with a little technique. There are two eye opening two strip Technicolor sequences, the opening at luxurious apartments of Mary Magdalene (Jacqueline Logan) and the Easter resurrection. Some nicely done touches like the casting off of the seven deadly sins from Mary Magdalene or the dropping of the thirty pieces of silver as payment to Judas (Joseph Schildkraut, DIARY OF ANNE FRANK) keep the film from slipping over to tedium (which it only does so at the very end). Still, it is a DeMille epic and the massive earthquake on Mount Calvary during the crucifixion is so over the top that one can't help but chortle. I saw the original 2 hours and 37 minutes roadshow cut but there's also a shorter version (by 45 minutes) that may appeal more to the less patient. With Dorothy Cumming as Mary, Rudolph Schildkraut as Caiaphas and Ernest Torrence as Peter.

Get Smart (2008)

An analyst (Steve Carell) in a secret government agency is promoted to a field agent. He is sent to Russia along with a female agent (Anne Hathaway) to track down an unknown terrorist group's procurement of nuclear material. By the time this big screen adaptation of the popular 1960s Mel Brooks/Buck Henry television series GET SMART hit cinemas, some forty years had passed. Since the younger movie going demographics had probably never heard of the show, much less seen it, the producers have hyped up the film with lots of action like a typical summer blockbuster in addition to the laughs. It worked. The film was a big hit and it's an enjoyable if disposable romp that doesn't dwell on nostalgia for its entertainment values. Carell does an admirable job of channeling Don Adams (the original Max Smart) and is considerably more appealing. If the film contains the usual blockbuster bloat, it nevertheless delivers enough chuckles that you don't mind. The comedy highlight is an amusing dance off between Carell and Lindsay Hollister against Hathaway and David S. Lee. I will confess however that I found the original TV show unfunny. Directed by Peter Segal (50 FIRST DATES). Dwayne Johnson and Alan Arkin provide strong support with other roles going to Bill Murray, James Caan and Terence Stamp.

Jane Austen In Manhattan (1980)

A famous acting teacher (Anne Baxter) competes with her former student and ex-lover (Robert Powell, JESUS OF NAZARETH)) for the theatrical rights to a play written by Jane Austen as an adolescent. His theatrical troupe borders on a cult as he manipulates his company's personal lives and takes their money. This is one of the lesser known films from the team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory and justifiably so. Pretentious twaddle about sums it up! Powell's avant garde production of the Austen play is awful, it's part of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's original script, yet not content to let us see just enough of it to comprehend the sheer awfulness of it, we're continually treated to scenes of the terrible performance of the Austen play. Baxter's production of the play as an opera is pretty dire, too. In between the rivalry, we're exposed to the banal personal lives of Powell's acting class including Sean Young in her film debut who falls under the spell of Powell's Svengali. Normally, this would be a bad thing but considering the creepy husband (Kurt Johnson) she's married to, Svengali makes a welcome alternative. With Katrina Hodiak (Baxter's real life daughter), Tim Choate, Nancy New and Michael Wager.

The Black Knight (1954)

A blacksmith (Alan Ladd) in the service of the Earl of Yeonil (Harry Andrews) is in love with the Earl's daughter (Patricia Medina). When Cornish men disguised as Vikings attack and burn the Earl's castle, the blacksmith adopts the identity of The Black Knight and attempts to foil a plan by a traitorous pagan (Patrick Troughton) and a Saracen (Peter Cushing) to usurp King Arthur's (Anthony Bushell) throne. This rather stodgy tale of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress can't stand on its own and when placed against a superior example of the genre like IVANHOE or even the lesser BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH, its inadequacies are glaring. Poor Alan Ladd is not only too old but he looks terrible, tired and pudgy, and he isn't helped by a disfiguring wig (at least I hope it's a wig!). As the only American in the all British cast, he's terribly out of place as a medieval knight. The only moment of real fun is a kitschy Hammeresque sequence with pagan maidens bumping and grinding around stone phallic symbols during a virgin sacrifice while friars are burned in baskets. Other than that respite, it's a rather plodding affair. Directed by Tay Garnett. With Andre Morell, Laurence Naismith and Ronald Adam.