Movie Reviews
Titles starting with B
Bernie
… played by Jack Black, is the nicest, sweetest, most beloved undertaker in Carthage, Texas. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Shirley MacLaine plays the part of the richest, nastiest, most disliked citizen in Carthage, possibly in all of East Texas. The film starts out by saying “The story you’re fixin’ to see is true.”
Well, not completely, but when are they ever? And it don’t ...
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Bessie
I have recently discovered something about myself. I like the blues, but I have a certain threshold level beyond which I don’t want to hear any more old-timey walkin’ blues for a while. It’s somewhere between half an hour and one hour. After that, I need a day or two before I can appreciate great musicians like Leadbelly, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson. It is all just so Read more »
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Here’s one that really won’t show you anything new, but that’s not a problem with me if it’s done by good people, and from the heart. This one is. I’m sure it will appeal more to people of a certain age (I’m, ahem, in my mid-sixties), but young people would do well to see it, and think about the elders all around them and the old age that will be theirs, sooner than they think. But they ... Read more »
Best in Show
Lee and I are dog lovers, and have attended several dog shows, which are pretty silly when they are showing them. (We prefer what they called a “benched” show, where attendees can stroll down the aisles and see beautiful examples of 100 breeds.) Chris Guest is the best there is at taking a small, inbred community like this and lampooning it. We laughed so hard it hurt. See ... Read more »
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
We saw a production of this by a local theater company, guest starring Russ Tamblyn as Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd. He was really terrific, as was the whole production. They changed a lot of the plot here to make the movie a star vehicle for Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds, which was inevitable, I guess, but it didn’t do the story any good. The music and the dancing are pretty good, though I could ... Read more »
The Best Man
Henry Fonda is the indecisive liberal, Cliff Robertson is the ruthless, scary conservative (back when it meant being against integration), both frontrunners for the presidential nomination of an un-named party, pretty clearly the Democrats. A great script by Gore Vidal from his Broadway hit. Filmed in lovely black and white at the lovely Ambassador Hotel on lovely Wilshire Boulevard in Los ... Read more »
Best of Anime 2004
There is a yearly animation festival in Chicago, and this is the DVD of the winners and honorable mentions. There are 23 of them, and I’m not going to review them individually. None are longer than 20 minutes, some as short as 30 seconds, and they are all over the place. There is some whimsy. One of the better ones was written by an 8-year-old and narrated by a 5-year-old.
What I’m ...
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The Best Thief in the World
I rented this because I like Mary-Louise Parker on “The West Wing.” Sadly, it’s not much of a movie. A woman in New York is struggling to keep her life together with three kids and a husband turned into a semi-vegetable by a stroke. Her son is badly disturbed, sweet and convincing on the outside, but he has a secret life breaking into apartments. He doesn’t steal much, he just goofs ... Read more »
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bow wow! Bow wow wow wow! Bad dog! Bow wow wow wow wow wow! You cut that out right now, if you know what’s good for you! I’ll beat the crap out of you with this rolled-up newspaper, you mutt!
This movie puked on our shoes, humped our legs, pissed on the seats, and left the inside of the car hopping with ...
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Bewitched
Sounds like a great idea. They’re re-making the TV show “Bewitched,” and they happen to have cast a real witch in the character of Samantha. All sorts of devilment should result. Well, Rumor Has It, the sequel to The Graduate, also sounded like a great concept but didn’t deliver, and this doesn’t, either. It’s mostly the fault of Will ... Read more »