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This Japanese sci-fi adventure is like E.T. crossed with THE TERMINATOR crossed with a John Woo flick.

Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS) is a hitman who is seeking revenge on Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani, GRAVEYARD OF HONOR) for killing his parents. Then a young teen named Milly (Anne Suzuki, forthcoming STEAMBOY) drops into his life… literally. She’s from the future and blackmails him into helping her on a mission that if she doesn’t succeed at will lead to an alien invasion that will destroy Earth.

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This is the best film about the ballet I’ve ever seen. It has the best ballet sequence I’ve ever seen on film. It also contains one of the most interesting characters in cinema history.

Victoria Page (Moira Shearer, PEEPING TOM) dreams of becoming a great ballerina. Julian Craster (Marius Goring, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA) is a young composer who is furious when his teacher steals his music and he hears it in a ballet. Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook, 1940’s GASLIGHT) runs the ballet and when Craster comes to challenge the music, Lermontov aloofly asks him to play his music for him then gives him a job as an assistant conductor. Regarding the stolen music, Lermontov says, “It is far less of a worry to be stolen from then to have to steal.” Lermontov gives Page an audition when they meet at a party, but when she arrives he ignores her like they were strangers. This sets up the film as Victoria and Julian move up the ranks at the ballet as well as move together.

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George Pal’s stop-motion animation is some of the most influential in film history. The detail of his puppets, their movement and the grand scope of the productions are truly amazing. However, what makes many of his films so wonderful are good stories.

THE PUPPETOON MOVIE is a compilation of Pal’s PUPPETOON short films, book-ended by stop-motion animation featuring Gumby, Pokey and other famed stop-motion characters directed by Arnold Leibovit. The book-ends make you only appreciate Pal’s work more because they’re hokey and maudlin.

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Preston Sturges is considered one of the screens great comedic directors. I’ve seen four of his films, including SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, LADY EVE and UNFAITHFULLY YOURS and have enjoyed them all. LADY EVE succeeds by tying the pratfalls with the characters reactions and feelings. Sometimes why a person falls down is what makes the pratfall funnier. THE PALM BEACH STORY has a decent balance, but lacks the character perfection that Fonda and Stanwyck brought to EVE.
In PALM BEACH, we are introduced to Gerry (Claudette Colbert, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) and Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea, SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS) as they are frantically trying to get to their wedding. After they make it, a title reads: and they lived happily ever after… or did they? We quickly discover that — now five years into their marriage — Gerry and Tom are broke. Tom is a straight-laced inventor with no means of raising money for his revolutionary airport and Gerry is a pampered poodle who spends all their money and can’t do anything around the house. So Gerry decides that for them to get what they want in life she will divorce him, marry a millionaire and then give Tom the money he needs to build the airport.

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This is a hard film to get into at first, but eventually its wonder and invention whips you up and takes you along for the ride. A missing scientist has done experiments creating flawed humans. Mademoiselle Bismuth (Mireille Mosse, SWIMMING POOL) is a tiny princess. Les Clones (Dominique Pinon, ALIEN: RESURRECTION) are four dimwitted clones who have narcolepsy. Krank (Daniel Emilfork, CASANOVA), the devious leader of the experiments, is brilliant, but cannot dream.

Alas, he kidnaps children, so he can steal their dreams, however the children are so scared of him that they only have nightmares. A group of Cyclops seek out new children and one day find the fearless Denree (Joseph Lucien, only film performance) at a carnival where he performs with his slow, muscle man brother One (Ron Perlman, HELLBOY). After Denree is kidnapped, One goes searching for him and meets up with a gang of orphans, led by Miette (Judith Vittet). Along the way, they must deal with conniving conjoined twins la Pieuvre, (Genevieve Brunet & Odile Mallet).

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At first I thought making a musical out of OLIVER TWIST cheapened the point that Dickens was trying to make about the exploitation of orphans. The “bad guys” in the film are watered down because at any moment a cheery song could break out and brighten up the day.

To some degree this idea is true with OLIVER! because never once did I really feel like Oliver (Mark Lester, BLACK BEAUTY) was in any true danger. Oliver gets kicked out of the orphanage, sold to a mortician, runs away to London and then gets caught up in a pickpocket gang, led by the shifty, but kind of lovable, Fagin (Ron Moody, A KID IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT). However, throughout all of that, Oliver lands on his feet and smiles to a nice song. The film also includes follow pickpocket The Artful Dodger (Jack Wild, TV’s H.R. PUFNSTUF), elder and mean thief Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed, GLADIATOR) and his barmaid girlfriend Nancy (Shani Wallis, THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE).

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This is a strangely fascinating thriller because of its various parallel stories. Thomas Babington Levy – nicknamed Babe (Dustin Hoffman, RAIN MAN) – is a history doctorate student, who is writing a thesis on his father, a left-leaning intellectual who was forced into exile during the McCarthy Red Scare. In the library one day, Babe strikes up a relationship with a mysterious European woman named Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller, BLACK SUNDAY).

In the beginning of the film, Babe’s story is paralleled with the story of Babe’s brother Henry David Levy – nicknamed Doc (Rob Scheider, JAWS), who is wrapped up in shady and dangerous dealings. Elsewhere, we meet former Nazi officer Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier, A LITTLE ROMANCE), who is trying to sneak into the U.S. Additionally we witness an accident with an elderly man (Ben Dova, RUBY’S DREAM). William Devane (FAMILY PLOT) plays Doc’s colleague Peter Janeway. How these various plotlines come together is part of the film’s fascination.

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As romances go this isn’t a bad one. The first thing that I’d like to address is casting. Hollywood in its early days (and even sometimes today) is notorious in casting stars to play minorities that they look nothing like. A prime example of this is Charlton Heston playing a Mexican in TOUCH OF EVIL. But like that movie, the casting of Jennifer Jones (SONG OF BERNADETTE) as an Asian in this film works because the performance and story are good.

Jones’ character is also half Chinese and half English, which helps. Costumes, make-up, hairstyle and Jones’ subtle accent also help create a believable illusion. In my college days, this kind of thing would have enraged me. But I’ve lightened up since then. When casting Yul Brynner as an Asian in THE KING AND I, Hollywood displays its racism. But this is art and this is different times. I don’t write off Shakespeare’s plays because I know men originally performed the female parts. So if the performance is not demeaning then I cannot complain too much. I will admit though that casting against race is a dangerous thing, because if its not convincing than it can ruin the whole picture. But here it works.

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For director Brian DePalma, CARLITO’S WAY is like the flipside of his SCARFACE. In SCARFACE, Tony Montana desperately tries to cling onto the gangster life as it slips away from him. In CARLITO’S WAY, Al Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, an ex-con who tries to go straight after his lawyer David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn, MYSTIC RIVER) gets him out of a 30-year prison sentence on a technicality.

The film deals with much of the same issues as THE GODFATHER III where a criminal has a hard time breaking out of crime when he keeps all his old friends. There’s a great initial scene in the film where Carlito accompanies a cousin to a drug deal and Pacino’s manner speaks more than words about his uncomfortable feelings. After five years of being in jail, Carlito has a tough time dealing with the way the world has changed. He tries to rekindle a romance with dancer Gail (Penelope Ann Miller, THE GUN IN BETTY LOU’S HANDBAG), whose career is in a slump. He takes a job at a nightclub to save money to move to the Bahamas, but he keeps running into the kind of people he really wants to be avoiding. A good example is Benny Blanco from the Bronx (John Leguizamo, SUMMER OF SAM), a cocky up-and-coming pusher who wants to raise his status by getting to know Carlito.

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Director Vincent Minnelli (Liza’s dad) made his debut with this musical, which I’m sure was a risky venture in 1943, because it is composed of an entirely black cast.

Little Joe Jackson (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, TV’s THE JACK BENNY SHOW) is trying to reform after marrying Petunia (Ethel Waters, THE SOUND AND THE FURY). But his old friends lure him into trouble again, which leads to an angel named The General (Kenneth Spencer, BATAAN) and demon Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram, SAHARA) making a bargain that if Little Joe can’t stay straight for the next six months he will go to hell. To spice up the temptation of Little Joe, Lucifer Jr. tosses in the sex kitten Georgia Brown (Lena Horne, THE WIZ) and a winning sweepstakes ticket.

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