What's Up, Doc? (1972)

I'd seen this only once, when it first came out, and remembered it as delightful and hilarious, but would it hold up fifty years later?

Well, I started laughing at the two minute mark, and pretty much never stopped. The movie ended half an hour ago, and I'm still giggling.

It's a top-flight screwball comedy, deserving to be mentioned alongside the original screwballs from a generation earlier, like It Happened One Night or The Awful Truth.

The story starts with, "Once upon a time, there was a plaid overnight case," but actually there are several. One is filled with top secret documents, another is stuffed with igneous rocks, a third has ladies' underwear, and a fourth identical case has bazillions of dollars worth of jewels.

Of course, the overnight cases get mixed up, and so does Ryan O'Neal when he meets Barbra Streisand. She's playing a kooky and accident-prone woman who decides to make him miserable, and succeeds.

Some people are rumored to be immune to Streisand, but I am a fan. Her character here makes no sense, but it's a comedy, not algebra, and she's hilarious. She was never lovelier nor funnier, and she sings Cole Porter's "You're the Top," and "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca.

Written by Buck Henry (Get Smart, The Graduate), David Newman & Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde, Superman), and Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon), who directed.

And what a supporting cast — Mabel Albertson, Sorrell Booke, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman, Kenneth Mars, Michael Murphy, Austin Pendleton, Randy Quaid, M Emmet Walsh, and "introducing Madeline Kahn," who of course steals every scene she's in.

"What do you mean, you can't find me? I'm right here."

The exteriors were filmed in San Francisco, and it's always nice to revisit that place.

I'll give away only one joke, because it's so subtle I almost didn't notice: During the Chinatown chase scene, the traditional Chinese marching band is playing "La Cucaracha".

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1969)

A young woman may have witnessed a murder, or she may have imagined it, so she turns to her love for murder mystery novels — Agatha Christie, Mickey Spillane, Edgar Wallace — and starts collecting evidence to determine just what she might've seen.

The movie is Italian, but John Saxon has a key role, speaking English that's dubbed into Italian.

The whole thing has a nice vibe that I enjoyed. The lady is smart, not a typical horror movie screamer, it's built more on tension than violence, and there are a few laughs, too. Also, tobacco cigarettes "laced with marijuana" are a plot point.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Hanna (2011)

In the wilds of SomeplaceCold, ex-CIA man Eric Bana has raised his daughter Saoirse Ronan to be an assassin and nothing else. Her father is the only human she knows, and he's taught her only facts from an encyclopedia and how to kill, and like in lots of movies, she's impossibly good at the killing.

"I'm ready," she announces, after she's finally beaten him in one of their daily fist- and weapons fights, so he sends her off to kill another CIA op (Cate Blanchett), who's cold-hearted and seems to be management (but I repeat myself).

"Not you, but everyone else — we need paper and computers so we don't have to ask people their names or look them in the face."

This is a fast, smart action movie, with a shallow story and a high body count. Each of the three principal characters are exactly what you'd expect if you've ever seen an action movie, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. Who doesn't love a good action movie?

This one's a well-made thriller with thrills, and would've been a perfect popcorn movie but I'm on a diet and do you have any idea how many calories are in popcorn? It's a perfect carrots and celery movie.

Pulling back for a wider angle view, though, I'm starting to feel that I've seen enough movies about girls and young women who've been raised to be killing automatons — Colombiana, Kick-Ass, Stranger Things, and probably others I've forgotten. Give me tough female assassins, sure, but preferably women who've chosen that career, not children who've had it chosen for them.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Princess Mononoke (1997)

I've heard about Princess Mononoke for 25 years, and nobody's ever mentioned it to me without saying it's great, so let me be the first.

It's a cartoon about a heroic quest, amidst mysticism and spirit-wolves and ancient gods and demons of the wilderness. The animation is very well done indeed, apart from every human character's anime-standard big-eyed look, which always reminds me of Margaret Keane or Precious Moments or "Go, Speed Racer, go!"

Princess Mononoke is a Japanese cartoon, dubbed into English by major league American actors including Billy Crudup and Minnie Driver and Claire Danes, but the voice work sounds like a first table-read. The original Japanese voices, subtitled, must've been better because they couldn't be worse, but between the big eyes and the spirit-wolves there's no way I'm subjecting myself to another two hours of this, in any language.

If you can get past the big eyes (I couldn't, obviously) it's visually beautiful, but I'm reminded of something my wife sometimes said as we talked about movies: If the reviews keep telling you a movie looks terrific, and that's all they can say, it means the story sucks."

Unless the movie is Koyaanisqatsi, the story is what matters, and the story in Princess Mononoke is boring.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Seven Days in May (1964)

This is a taut thriller about a coup against America, plotted by high-ranking military officers and masterminded by a treasonous General (Burt Lancaster). The General's #1 man (Kirk Douglas) is the only person who catches a whiff of the plan, and he takes it to the White House, leading to much intrigue and drama.

This film is almost 60 years old, but it's only slightly dated, and only in terms of style — the characters and the film itself are surprised that this is happening, but I don't think such events would be very surprising today. To anyone who's visited reality, it feels like tomorrow's headlines.

Directed by John Frankenheimer (Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate), from a screenplay by Rod Serling, who needs no parenthesis. Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, and Fredric March star, with Richard Anderson, Martin Balsam, Whit Bissell, Andrew Duggan, John Houseman, Hugh Marlowe, and Edmond O'Brien.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1948)

The Wolves won the World Series last year, but the team's two star infielders (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) are late to spring training. They're not holdouts, just tap dancing on stage in Pottsdown, Illinois.

When they get to Florida, the news is that the team's owner has died and the team is now owned by a distant relative who's — uh, oh — a woman (Esther Williams). Yes, she swims.

Story by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. Directed by Busby Berkeley, but without his ordinary flourishes. It ends with a nice number that cleverly acknowledges that you've been watching a movie.

There's nothing great here, or memorable in any way, and there's almost no baseball, but there are a few laughs, the songs are pleasant, and Kelly and Sinatra both get a girl.

Seems the metaphors of baseball and sex have progressed a lot since the '40s. In one scene, Kelly draws Ms Williams off to the side of a giant hotel ballroom for a private conversation, and this is referred to as "rounding third."

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

a/k/a Let's Dance Tonight

This was intended to be the next Rocky Horror Picture Show, or perhaps a spoof of 1960s 'bikini' movies.

It's a science fiction musical, wherein an alien robot on a guitar-shaped shape ship traverses the universe looking for the source of rock'n'roll. This leads them to Dee Dee (Pia Zadora), a high school girl first seen singing a duet with Jermaine Jackson (who isn't seen again).

Dee Dee is in love with bad boy rocker Frankie (Craig Sheffer), but he doesn't want a girl singing in his band. Ruth Gordon plays a sheriff obsessed with finding the space aliens, but she's hardly in the film. Everyone except Ms Gordon sings, and none of the music is of Rocky Horror quality, but all of it's catchy and on-key, and there's even some good dancing.

Yeah, I know — Pia Zadora was a struggling actress until she married a very rich financier and businessman, whose money got her some starring roles and bought her a Golden Globe Award as Best New Star of 1982. Her husband funded this movie, too, but at some point his money stops being outrageous and seems instead like a warped version of True Love. About 75% of Hollywood success comes from nepotism, so I overlook it by habit, and anyway, Zadora is not the problem here.

There is no problem here. It's an objectively bad movie, sure. Most of the jokes fall flat, and the costumes and especially the hair reeks of the '80s, but I enjoyed it more than the actual 1980s. I also liked the monster with the long tentacles, and the alien band, played by an actual Christian rock band called Rhema, though there is no mention of Jesus in the film.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming attractions:
• Horse Feathers (1932)
• Inside Moves (1980)
• The Kiss (1988)
• Laboratory Conditions (2022)
• Love Streams (1984)
• McLibel (2005)
• The Visitor (1978)
2/7/2023

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, try • Alter • Cineverse • Criterion • DocsVille • Dust • Fandor • Hoopla • IHaveNoTV • IndieFlix • Internet Archive • Kanopy • KinoCult • Christopher R Mihm • Mubi • Mark Pirro • Public Domain Movies• RareFilmm • Scarecrow Video • Shudder • ThoughtMaybe • VoleFlix • or your local library.

Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

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Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free. Click any image to enlarge. [Arguments & recommendations are welcome,](mailto:[email protected]?subject=Comments for Mostly Words) but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.