The Cheap Detective

Screenplay by Neil Simon, starring Peter Falk with small parts by a real slew of actors, like Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Ann-Margret, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and many, many more. There’s lots of jokes and references to other movies and it’s fun for a while, but gets a little tiresome during the second half.

Cheaper by the Dozen

What a disaster. Steve Martin can be the funniest man on the planet, but if he keeps making doo-doo like this and Bringing Down the House, people are going to forget …

Cherry 2000

Here’s a hoot. This film takes place in 2017! I am writing this on January 8, 2018.

This is a fairly strange post-apocalyptic world. It seems there are pockets of stability. Los Angeles, for instance, looks pretty futuristic and normal, but people aren’t making things anymore, they are using up the stuff they already have. Such as female love robots called gynoids that are a hell ... Read more »

Cheyenne Autumn

They say that John Ford’s last film was done partly in penance for all the nasty, murdering Indians he put into so many of his earlier westerns. This time he wanted to show how badly they were treated, show it from the Indian’s point of view. Well, cripes, John, would it have killed you to cast a few actual Indians in the picture? Instead we get a lot of whites (Sal Mineo, I shit you not) ... Read more »

Chi-Hwa-Seon

As far as I can remember, this is the only Korean film I’ve ever seen. I am profoundly ignorant of Korean history, culture, and art. (It seems they wore a great variety of funny hats.) This is the story of Jang Seung-ub, a peasant who lived in the last half of the 19th Century and is acknowledged to be the greatest Korean artist ever. He took the name of Ohwon and revolutionized the whole ... Read more »

Chi-Raq

The ancient Greek Aristophanes wrote a play titled Lysistrata, about women who denied sex to their men until they stopped the endless Peloponnesian War. Spike Lee used this story and transported it to Chicago’s South Side, with rival gangs subbing for the Greek armies. Not only that, but he preserved the idea of having most of it performed in verse, though it is ... Read more »

Chicago

One of my favorite musical movies of all time, made from one of my favorite stage musicals. You can’t help wondering what Bob Fosse would have done with it if he had lived, but the present director preserved the Fosse flavor, and though I hated to lose the onstage orchestra and stage format, the device of having the musical numbers occur in Roxie’s imagination was ingenious.

Chicago 10

This is a movie about what we usually refer to as the Chicago Seven: Abbie Hoffman (no relation to Julius Hoffman, the hanging judge), David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner (pronounced WINE-er, as he pointed out to the judge, and no relation to the notorious weenie-wagging ex-congressman). (Sobering thought: Most of them are dead now.) When ... Read more »

Chicken Every Sunday

Dan Dailey and Celeste Holm are a couple in Tucson, slightly before and after 1900. He has a pattern, which is to start a business and then, just as it is about to make a nice profit, he gets tired of it and embarks on another business. His long-suffering wife has to take in boarders to make ends meet, and they are forever adding to the house to make a room for one more. When his ... Read more »