Titles I happened to check out on Netflix in the month of June 2014 listed from best to worst:
Some Like It Hot (1959, 122 Minutes, NR) is one of the fastest paced of all screwball-riot black & white comedies, directed by the indispensable Billy Wilder. Two Chicago musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) accidentally witness the St. Valentine’s Massacre of 1929, and to hide from gangsters, they join an all-girl’s band. While donned in outrageous drag, the two musician horndogs vie for Marilyn Monroe’s attention, never more hysterically funny than she is here. At a resort paradise, Curtis disguises himself as a millionaire to win her over and Lemmon becomes content in his dress and heels because a real millionaire wants to buy love with him. The final line of the movie is immortal because it is spontaneous, unexpected and contrary to good taste. With all of it, you have to consider the innuendo beneath that suggests the sex for money jokes. A+
SCREWBALL COMEDY / TEENS AND ADULTS / MASTERPIECE UPLIFT
Cactus Flower (1969, 103 Minutes, PG) is the comedy that won Goldie Hawn an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but the movie belongs to Walter Matthau as a cad who fakes being previously married with children after he proposes to bird-brained Hawn. Still very funny for modern day standards (Adam Sandler’s “Just Go For It” was a flaky rip-off), and also a peering time capsule of the 60’s. Ingrid Bergman is terrific too as a middle-aged spinster who pretends to be Matthau’s disposed first wife. B+
SCREWBALL COMEDY / TEENS AND ADULTS / AFTERNOON UPLIFT
American Heart (1992, 114 Minutes, R) is a candid homelessness and destitution drama, with a father and son trying to make it on the fringes of Seattle. I give it a little more boost of a recommendation only because Jeff Bridges declared this as the best work of his career, and Edward Furlong, as the unwanted tag-along son, was never better in his own right. B+
DRAMA / DOWNHEARTED / WEEKEND REFLECTION MOVIE
The Rocketeer (1991, 108 Minutes, PG) is a gee-whiz action-adventure with Billy Campbell as a 1930’s aviator who straps on a lost rocket pack that the Nazis are trying to reclaim. Jennifer Connelly is the attractive white-satin dress eye candy love interest, the purring Timothy Dalton is a dashing movie star who is really a Nazi spy. Cornball fun, and the fight atop a zeppelin is spectacular climax. B
ACTION-ADVENTURE / KIDS 8+ / EARLY MORNING RISER
Absolute Power (1997, 121 Minutes, R) has Clint Eastwood as a cat burglar (and director credit) who witnesses a woman’s death by the hands of the President of the United States. Highly entertaining ridiculousness, for as improbable as it gets it manages sharp dialogue and unpredictable sly twists. With Gene Hackman as the President and Ed Harris as a detective. B
SUSPENSE / LATE TEENS / WEEKDAY LATE NIGHT THRILLS
Bullhead (2011, 128 Minutes, R, Belgium with English subtitles) is all the more a bad film because it’s inherently intriguing but is mired by too many scenes that add nothing, and directing tics that don’t know what it’s after. Matthias Schoenaerts has tremendous inner pain as a brawny cattle farmer with ties to the hormone mafia, i.e., the hormones he is supposed to use on farm produce he uses on himself. The flashbacks of how he become hooked on hormone drugs compelling. Maybe worth watching if you have patience and tolerance for slow-moving pics. C+
FOREIGN FILM / CEREBRAL DRAMA / FALL MOVIE
Project X (1987, 107 Minutes, PG) is a good story weakly told. The Air Force uses chimpanzees as test pilots with several subjects contaminated with radiation poisoning to prove that chimps would still be able to theoretically bomb the enemy if there was a World War III. Matthew Broderick works with the animals agreeably until he learns of this inhumane practice, and puts up the kind of protest you find in foolish 80’s movies like these. With Helen Hunt, William Sadler, and a bunch of talented chimps. C+
SUSPENSE / YOUNG TEENS / WEEKEND FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Bed of Roses (1996, 88 Minutes, PG) is a Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson snuggle movie that has a cute, romantic hook in Act I, and has no developed Act II or Act III going for it. And the title itself is a lie: He doesn’t surprise her by laying a thousand roses on her bed when she arrives home, it’s merely referring to his flower garden. C-
ROMANTIC DRAMA / SAPPY COUPLES / EVENING CUDDLE MOVIE
Stranded (2013, 87 Minutes, UR) is the umpteenth “Alien” knock-off of a morphing predator killer that parasites on human hosts on a lunar space station. This is Roger Christian’s follow-up film to “Battlefield Earth,” the worst movie ever made, and this one is nearly as mucky a mess. Not as disgusting, but a big yawner. Christian Slater gets top billing. D-
HORROR / CREATURE FEATURE / BAD MOVIES WE HATE
Johnny Mnemonic (1995, 96 Minutes, R) would be a hilariously outdated guilty pleasure if it wasn’t so yukky to look at. Keanu Reeves is a human computer data courier who travels on foot, running from criminal syndicates, to deliver contracted information. Has no one heard of encryption email yet? This is the ugliest, cheapest-looking of futuristic potboilers. One of the worst movies ever made. F
SCI-FI / ACTION FANS / BAD MOVIES WE HATE
