Destroyer

When it comes Oscar time next year, I want to nominate … well, I just tried to look it up, but it seems the IMDb has moved the crew part of the Full Cast and Crew to the paid IMDb Pro section, so I don’t know who did the make-up. But he or she managed to make Nicole Kidman, one of the prettiest women I know of, into a face that looked like twenty miles of rough dirt road. And it is utterly ... Read more »

Destry Rides Again

Jimmy Stewart plays a straight-arrow who doesn’t pack a gun, but shows up in the corrupt little burg of Bottleneck to clean up the town. This could have been dead serious and ponderous, but it’s a lot of fun, with a great script and a fine cast. Marlene Dietrich is maybe the all-time best dance hall girl in any western. She sings the classic “See What the Boys in the Backroom Will Have,” ... Read more »

The Detective

Here’s a movie a bit ahead of its time. It doesn’t follow just one story, but episodes in the life of a cop who really tries to do the right thing among all the political pressures on him. He is, in the end, unable to, but he gives it his best shot. Sinatra is very good. And I think it was really groundbreaking in another respect. It shows the furtive world of the contemporary homosexual ... Read more »

Detour

There’s this down-and-out loser, see, staring into his glass of rye whiskey (okay, a Coke, actually, in a two-bit diner in Reno), thinking back on how his life has gone off the tracks. He’s a piano player, and he tickles the ivories pretty good, but he’s never had that Big Break. He sets out to ride his thumb from Gotham to Tinseltown to see his doll singer, with nothing in his pockets but ... Read more »

The Devil Came On Horseback

Brian Steidle isn’t your usual world-saving Peace Corp member, not the kind of guy you might expect to make a movie like this. He’s an ex-Marine, and got a job with the African National Congress to be an unarmed observer in the south of Sudan, trying to keep the peace. Later he gravitated north and west, toward Darfur, and the things he saw there changed him forever. I put off watching ... Read more »

The Devil-Doll

I was surprised how good this was. Even though it was directed by Tod Browning, I expected a routine horror show. It is a lot more than that.

Lionel Barrymore and a mad scientist friend escape from Devil’s Island after he has been imprisoned for 17 years for a financial fraud he didn’t commit. He was framed by three other bankers. He’s had a long time to think about his revenge. ... Read more »

The Devil Wears Prada

I’ll admit it, this movie started out with 4 strikes against it, because it asks me to accept that the world of fashion really matters. It’s basically the old Cinderella story girls love so much, because it tells them that if they just put on some pretty clothes and have a fashion make-over on Oprah they’ll stop being the boring, ordinary women they actually are. Only ... Read more »

The Devil’s Disciple

Turner Classic Movies lists this is a comedy, but don’t expect pratfalls or fart jokes. It’s based on a play by George Bernard Shaw, and the wit is definitely Shavian. Ironies abound as a minister (Burt Lancaster) and a ne’er-do-well (Kirk Douglas) match moral principles against cynical worldliness during the Revolutionary War. (Do the Brits call it the American Rebellion, as people in the ... Read more »

The Diamond Arm

Here is a highly-rated movie that is described by many as “the most beloved Russian comedy.” It is a comedy of errors involving a poor innocent schmuck who accidentally gets involved in a smuggling scheme, with diamonds concealed in a cast on his arm. As in a Donald Westlake book, comical things go wrong. But most of it didn’t work well with me. It was too much knockabout, and didn’t seem ... Read more »