Movie Reviews
Texas Rising
Before I even get started, I have to comment on the opening credits. They are machine-like, with circles of things like cannons, rifles, pistols, tomahawks, spears, and so forth revolving in concentric circles. It instantly reminded me of another show that has opening credits very similar to that. So the alternate title to this could be Game of Thrones, Y’all! ... Read more »
Finian’s Rainbow
This film probably should never have been made. Big, old-fashioned musicals were really on their way out. The show harked back from 1947 and was seriously dated, somehow mixing the story of a leprechaun and his gold with race relations in the mountains. For some reason novice Francis Ford Coppola was chosen to direct. He insisted this totally insignificant bit of fluff be made more ... Read more »
The Sugarland Express
In 1969 two losers named Ila Fae Holiday and Robert Dent sort of accidentally kidnapped a Texas Highway Patrolman and ended up leading a slow-motion chase through a lot of my old stomping grounds in southeast Texas, from Winnie to Anahuac to Port Arthur and Beaumont, trailing over a hundred cop cars and news vans. Through Houston and up to Conroe and finally to Wheelock, where Bobby wanted ... Read more »
The Kid with a Bike
Cyril is twelve, and his father has rejected him. But Cyril is deeply in denial about it, and is as tenacious as a snapping turtle. It takes a lot of convincing to make him accept that the old man is just not interested in him. Meanwhile, he does exactly what he want to, when he wants to, and fuck everybody else. This is just not the sort of movie for me, since I don’t much like kids, boys ... Read more »
Cake
I’m not sure of the significance of the title. There are two cakes in the movie. One is cooked by the main character, and one is brought in by Anna Kendrick, who is dead. She then throws it out the window and jumps after it, killing herself again, I guess. I’m just hoping this isn’t the cake that got left out in the rain in MacArthur Park. I’ve always hated that soggy cake metaphor. ... Read more »
The Last Five Years
There is a Sondheim musical titled Merrily We Roll Along that is told in reverse. It begins with some people who used to be friends, creating musicals, but have broken up. Each scene then takes us a little further into the past, until they are young and vigorous and full of hope. (It was a big flop, but I was lucky enough to see a production at the University of ... Read more »
Mean Streets
Just because a movie is seminal, doesn’t mean it will hold up forever in my esteem. There is no question that this was one of those films that changed the movies forever. It took us down the mean streets, with guys so penny-ante that they would rip off some teenagers for $15, guys who never even rose up to the Sopranos level, much less the Corleones. There was the usual fuckup, the kid who ... Read more »
The One I Love
What a find! I have concluded that if you want to see good science fiction in the movies, you should walk right past the multiplex showing the latest $250,000,000 Avengers-style dumbfests, movies that measurably lower your IQ as you’re sitting there, and seek out the low- or no-budget little ones, like Primer, Read more »
The Glass Key
I’m going to express a heretical opinion here: I don’t think Dashiell Hammett was that great a writer. Sure, he was an innovator, taking his characters into sleazy situations that no one else was writing about, and no question he pretty much invented the “hard-boiled” school of crime fiction. And for that I thank him. But I just have never been able to like his ... Read more »
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 »