Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
Chickens Come Home
Ollie is the owner of a successful business selling fertilizer, and he’s also running for mayor. But an old girlfriend shows up with an incriminating picture she wants to sell him. Stan is recruited to try to keep her away from a dinner party Ollie is throwing with some influential potential donors. I’ve always felt that when the boys are prosperous the comedy never works quite as well as ... Read more »
Child 44
In 1932 Joseph Stalin artificially engineered a famine that killed (estimates differ) at least five million Ukrainians. Could have been as many as twelve million. This genocide was known as the Holodomor, and most Americans have never heard of it. But if you’re wondering why Ukrainians are less than pleased with murderous pigfucker Vladimir Putin’s illegal theft ... Read more »
Childhood’s End
I’ve heard it many times, and I’ll bet you have, too. “Wouldn’t it be great if they made (some classic SF novel) into a movie?” I’ve even said it, for books like Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Alfred Bester’s The Stars, My Destination, Larry Niven’s Ringworld, or John Varley’s Read more »
Children of Men
This was a fairly frustrating experience. It’s a crackerjack thriller based on a pretty stupid idea. Suddenly, globally, and without explanation, women stopped being capable of fertilization in the year 2008. Twenty years later, all is chaos, with only the UK having a semblance of civilization. (Why the UK? Why, because that’s where the author of the book, PD James, lives, I ... Read more »
Children of Paradise
The back story on this movie is almost as interesting as the movie itself. Briefly, it was made during the Nazi occupation of France, against daunting odds. If you want to know more, Robert Ebert provides a nice summary of the circumstances. Because the Nazis wouldn’t allow any films longer than 90 minutes the director, Marcel Carné, just cut it into two pieces. It is not an Read more »
China Seas
A tramp passenger/freighter bound for Singapore, Captain Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Wallace Beery, Malay pirates, a typhoon complete with tilting sets, a runaway piano in the lounge and a runaway steamroller on deck, and enough water pouring over everything that Gable was in serious danger of being smashed by it all … what more could you ask? Not much, really. It’s a ... Read more »
The China Syndrome
Sometimes a movie opens at precisely the right time to become a blockbuster. This one would have done well, but the fact that the Three-Mile Island incident happened only twelve days later propelled it to a must see. It’s a scientifically accurate picture of what might happen if a nuclear reactor got out of control. Jack Lemmon is great, as always, and Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas do ... Read more »
Chinatown
DIRECTED by Roman Polanski
PRODUCED by Robert Evans
WRITTEN by Robert Towne
ORIGINAL MUSIC by Jerry Goldsmith
CINEMATOGRAPHY by John A Alonzo
PRODUCTION DESIGN by Richard Sylbert
If you tortured me, if you tied me to a chair and showed me videos of George W. Bush for three days straight, if you forced me to choose my favorite ... Read more »
Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed
Remember Shirley Chisholm? She died this year, on New Years Day 2005, aged 81. In 1972 she was a two-term congresswoman from Brooklyn, the first black woman to sit in the House. So she’s black, and she’s a woman. Strike one, strike two. She’s rather homely, bucktoothed, with a wart on her chin. She is the daughter of West Indian parents. You want more? She has a speech impediment. So what ... Read more »
Chloe
Julianne Moore is a gynecologist who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her. She hatches a rather bizarre plan to hire a high-class prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to come on to him, see if he will take the bait. The pro meets with him three times, the last one in a hotel room … or does he? I don’t want to give away too much, but it will surely occur to everyone that the girl ... Read more »