When I Stop Dreaming

1941. Starring Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck. Directed by Preston Sturges. There’s no better cure for a dark, rainy, depressing day than a Preston Sturges film. The Lady Eve is one of his best. Henry Fonda stars as snake expert Charles Pike, who, although heir to the Pike’s Pale fortune (“Pike’s Pale – The Ale That Won For Yale!”), doesn’t know much about ale or beer, and even less about women. As he states many times, he “just spent a year up the Amazon” and is returning with a newly discovered type of snake. But Charles is about to meet a …

2008. Directed by Alex Gibney. It was impossible, eventually, to tell Hunter S. Thompson, the journalist, from Hunter S. Thompson, the legend, and that was problematic. “Not only was I not necessary, I was in the way,” he explains in his familiar monotone mumble. The drinking had become expected, the drugs required, the guns were fired randomly, providing the dangerous edge, now that his writing wasn’t supplying it. The rebel celebrity had outlived the rebel insight, but, after years of drug use and alcohol abuse, he still controlled the narrative. He knew how to wrap up his story. This remarkable …

1982. Starring Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, Burl Ives. Sam Fuller wanted to take on the world, and I love him for it. Just how I loved the advice he gave fellow director Jim Jarmusch — “If the opening scene doesn’t give you a hard-on, throw the goddamn thing out!” In White Dog, he takes on racism — and not overt racism, but the kind of racism that is bred into us, deep down into our instincts, that keeps us from all getting along. Kristy McNichol stars as a Hollywood Hills actress who — in the opening scene — runs over …

2008. Starring Philippe Petit. Directed by James Marsh. Philippe Petit is trying to explain how he took the first steps onto the wire. He has been drawing it out over the course of the movie, talking about the planning, about procuring the supplies and sneaking them into one of the Twin Towers, about hiding under a tarp on the top floor as a security guard stood just feet away. One false step — even before walking out onto the roof — and his “fantasy” would be over before it was begun. The dream of walking on a wire between the …

2007. Starring Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira. Directed by Thomas McCarthy. It’s valuable for Americans to be reminded of how lucky it is to be free. Richard Jenkins, previously a well-traveled character actor, takes the lead as Walter Vale, a Connecticut professor who admits that he hasn’t worked in years, despite “co-authoring” a paper on international economic development and having to present the paper’s findings at a New York conference. Dropping into his NYC apartment for the first time in months, he finds a couple staying there, having been misled into renting the apartment from a mysterious “Ivan.” …

1974. Starring Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Rourke. Directed by John Hough. Two-Lane Blacktop is more contemplative and Vanishing Point is more elegiac, but Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry isn’t concerned with much of a story, allowing it to focus on some really great chase scenes. Larry (Peter Fonda) and Deke (Adam Rourke) are small-time crooks who have planned a grocery store robbery, holding the owner’s (Roddy McDowell, uncredited) wife and daughter hostage until they can make a clean getaway. That getaway is complicated by Larry’s girl from the night before, the trampy Crazy Mary (Susan George), who refuses to be …

2008. Starring Larry Bishop, Michael Madsen, Eric Balfour. Directed by Larry Bishop. Most of the biker movies I’ve seen have been content with stressing the antisocial appeal of the gangs — beer-drinking, authority-flipping, whatever-rebelling nature of a bunch of smelly guys. Plus there was always one guy who took things too far. Few, if any, have had a message other than drop out, turn on and over act. The Quentin Tarantino-produced Hell Ride had a couple things going for it. First, it wasn’t made in the ’60s or ’70s, so it doesn’t revel in the fact that the lead characters …

1953. Starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters. Directed by Samuel Fuller. Pickup on South Street begins with a claustrophobic encounter on a streetcar, as three-time loser and talented pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) sees a promising target in Candy (Jean Peters), and stands directly in front of her, eye to eye, breathing each other’s breath, and removes the wallet from within her purse. He doesn’t know that, tucked within that purse, is hidden microfilm, being tracked by a couple of federal agents who are only feet away. Such close quarters don’t allow for many secrets, but McCoy makes the most of …

2007. Starring Freddy Rodriguez, Rose McGowan. Directed by Robert Rodriguez. I bet that, for every old fart writing a post about the disappearing drive-in movie theater, there are a dozen young farts saying, “so what?” I know it’s easier for today’s teenagers to do everything — see horrific movies, get away from the parents, drink like a fish, jump into that carnal rodeo called puberty, to feel young and invincible and immortal. And I also know that old farts like me are much luckier than our more-privileged progeny, because ours was a hard-earned, rarely achieved state of stimulation plus satiation. …

2008. Starring Anna Faris, Emma Stone. Beauty and brains. Rarely do the two co-exist. As I said back in August, when penning an admiring (and not-at-all-creepy) tribute to Anna Faris, she is capable of carrying an average comedy into a next level of funny. In The House Bunny, she portrays Shelly Darlington, a 27-year-old resident of the Playboy Mansion who dreams of putting that beauty on display as a centerfold. Instead, she is kicked out of the mansion and, now homeless, staggers onto the distressed yard of a sorority much in need of her help. The Zetas, made up of …