Swedish Chef Bakes a Cake for the Mob

Bugsy (1991)
directed by Barry Levinson
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Sometimes a picture really does tell a story, so picture this: Warren Beatty with that late-career heft, stuffed into clothes tailored to enhance the shoulders, angrily cramming down forkfuls of shrimp Arnaud while Annette Bening undresses him from the floor. Oscar-winning art direction and a confused but still better-than-reported screenplay are the kibble in the bowl to entice the big dog into taking his medicine and putting on a show. Director Levinson only bolsters the argument that Beatty likes directors he can push around, but I wouldn't trade 2+ hours of Warren's hammy rage for - well, what do you trade things for these days? A better accent for Ben Kingsley? A trimmer Elliott Gould who stops playing the schlub? Money, maybe, but isn't that what makes a vault like Bugsy possible? Let 'em keep it, I say.

Slow Sweat on the Upper Lip of a Girl in the Thrall of a Shanghai Bar

The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
directed by Josef von Sternberg
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Supposedly the play was more explicit about prostitution, and maybe von Sternberg leaves out a timeline in Gene Tierney's decline from apple of her father's eye to opium addict, but sordidness thrives in the swamps between connect-the-dots. There is no high ground here - even the gambling den sinks towards hell - and no character much better than a materialistic lecher. Those Huston men could carry evil more naturally than most actors, and if Victor Mature isn't sinister enough in his nonchalance, the cumulative wrongs inflicted on a mutual victim inhabit Tierney like a wasting witch in the woods. She is frayed, unhinged, even tiresome. But Laura's got nothing on her first few scenes; no one could love a ghost once they'd seen a flesh and blood woman dissolve into a cocktail - slowly, slowly, slowly - just so.

Fishing for Compliment, Catch and Release

Every Which Way But Loose (1978)
directed by James Fargo
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

What film finally killed the credit montage scored with a movie's hit single? It's a great way to settle into your seat and really consider those first few handfuls of popcorn. But where Midnight Cowboy or Cisco Pike immediately steer into topical drama, this drifting classic stays about as laid-back as anything. The formula would be stranger - why is the orangutan there at all, for instance - if you stopped enjoying it long enough to ask questions. Elizabeth expected to go study some GRE words thirty minutes in, but she stayed. It's an easy movie to recommend, and it clears Clint of any future badmouthing I might reserve for his next costume epic. Hard to imagine a vanity project made with more humility or honor than this, even in the monkey cage at the Albuquerque Zoo.

If you're lucky, I'll replace this caption with a picture of a shirtless Clint Eastwood just as soon as I find the one I'm looking for!

Black Snake Moan?

Angel Heart (1987)
directed by Alan Parker
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

"Some religions think that the egg is the center of the soul, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't know that."
"Would you like an egg?"
"No, thank you. I've got a thing about chickens."

1987 is also the year that "Homeboy" Rourke starred in Barfly - pre- plastic surgery, pre- return to boxing Mickey. Angel Heart is no Barfly, but who would want it to be? Better, in fact, to run as far away from Bukowski as possible: a fantasy world where the devil catches up with a man who sold his soul but switched bodies with a shell-shocked soldier from World War II when the time came to collect. No allegories, no last-minute cop-out, plenty of 1950s upstate New York atmosphere.

Oh, and New Orleans. Goodness gracious is that when the vision goes wrong. Jazz funerals, Cosby cast-offs in see-through shifts, timid black musicians who jump at the chicken foot on the urinal. Where to begin? Robert De Niro trying to look menacing while eating a hard-boiled egg is one thing, but the slave revolt in Interview with the Vampire as blood-soaked orgy - one of dozens of racist miscalculations - even takes the pleasure out of mad-eyed Mickey. All of a sudden, he's just not there, and the fun drains away like dirty soap.

Hiking in the Woods with Friends

Pineapple Express (2008)
directed by David Gordon Green
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Winrock 6 Theatre

Who decided that Apatow backlash begins with Pineapple Express? Manohla? Is it because I finally enjoyed a Seth Rogen Daniel Desario film without reservation? Well, I did.

Who in Express gave up drugs in order to grow up? No one! Who learned that being yourself is the best way to fit in? Not the three lonely slobs in the diner. When a choice is made in the movie, the girlfriend gets dumped, the pot gets smoked, the cruiser goes missing, and people die. If that's not the light-hearted extravaganza I wanted to see on the big screen this August, I'll walk my George Washington poster like a plank.

The joke isn't that the drug dealer doesn't know what time it is, but that he really did sleep eighteen hours. It's why we are all exactly who we want to be, and why summer is the season we still see in our dreams.

Sun Days

Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007)
directed by John Landis
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Interesting people, as a rule, don't say very much about themselves. You expect the usual talking heads in any documentary about a comedian, and the John Landis pedigree - I kid - spares us no one.

1. "Sarah Silverman, tell us about listening to Jewish stand-up as a teenager in New Hampshire."

That's the first part of Mr. Warmth, as ordinary as all get out.

2. "Debbie Reynolds, tell us about Las Vegas when the desert came up to the swimming pool in the back of the hotel and everybody in the city had three acts to choose from for entertainment each night."

That's where the documentary clicks, with celebrities as storytellers, reviving the Arabian Nights from the desert sands. Or the Sands. Sinatra was clearly one of these people, telling Jack Kennedy what Dean Martin did and Dean about the head-case actress that the President couldn't shake.

3. Enter Rickles and the photos of dead men on his wall.

Don Rickles comparing Burt Lancaster to Clark Gable is the perfect autobiographical anecdote - the workingman's secret when work is all that's left.