Movie Reviews
Titles starting with G
Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese has made three films about those scum-of-the-Earth people known as the Mafia. This was the first, and I think still the best, though both Casino and The Departed were excellent. And though I dearly loved the Godfather saga, I’m sure this is a lot closer to what a life in the Mob is all about. ... Read more »
Gorky Park
Martin Cruz Smith has written seven novels about Russian cop Arkady Renko, with another one coming up later this year (2013). He is one of the great fictional creations, up there with Philip Marlowe and Matthew Scudder and one less well-known, Stuart Kaminsky’s Porfiry Rostnikov, also a Moscow cop. This was the first one, back in 1981, and the book was an immediate hit.
It was ... Read more »
Gorky Park
Martin Cruz Smith has written seven novels about Russian cop Arkady Renko, with another one coming up later this year (2013). He is one of the great fictional creations, up there with Philip Marlowe and Matthew Scudder and one less well-known, Stuart Kaminsky’s Porfiry Rostnikov, also a Moscow cop. This was the first one, back in 1981, and the book was an immediate hit.
It was ... Read more »
Gosford Park
Here we get a long and far from affectionate look at a group of some of the most useless, boring, entitled, crass and unfeeling people who ever lived. I’m speaking, of course, of the British aristocrats and upper classes. Luckily, the movie is actually about some much more interesting people: the army of menials who serve them downstairs.
Robert Altman liked to experiment, and this ... Read more »
Gothika
Five minutes into this movie Lee said “Another blue movie.” No, not porn, not smut. We’ve seen a lot of blue movies recently. What it means is, they are shot almost entirely in the dark, in shades of blue. Things are obscured by shadows and intervening objects. There’s a lot of lightning and rain. This is a pretty good sign that the script is a mess. People blunder around without any good ... Read more »
Grace and Frankie
How’s this for a dream cast: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen, and Sam Waterston? Those are the stars of the new Netflix sitcom, which came out all at once on May 8, as is their wont. And if you have long dreamed of seeing President Jed Bartlett plant a big smackeroo on the lips of District Attorney Jack McCoy, this is the series you’ve been waiting for!
The premise is simple. ... Read more »
The Graduate
We saw an interview with Mike Nichols, the last one he did before he died. This was his second film. He had been taken with the music of Simon and Garfunkel, and intended to use it in the film, which was a very unusual thing to do in those days. Mostly it would be stuff they had already recorded, but he also wanted an original song that had something to do with Mrs. Robinson. Simon wrote ... Read more »
Gran Prix
I saw this when it was new at the Cinerama Dome at the corner of Sunset and Ivar in Hollywood. To give you an idea of how important movies have been in my life, I was living on the streets in Los Angeles at the time, crashing wherever I could find some floor space with other longhair dope-fiend hippies. I had no job, wasn’t looking for one, so funds were limited. Any money I had came from ... Read more »
Gran Torino
Somebody once proposed putting Ronald Reagan’s photogenic puss up on Mount Rushmore. If they did, I’d have to sneak up there in the dead of night, like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau in North by Northwest, and either blow up his loathsome face, or else dump a ton of free-market, union-busting chickenshit down over it. If anybody’s face ought to ... Read more »
Grand Canyon
The only reason a white man of a certain economic class, driving a luxury car, could have for driving through Inglewood at night is to be returning home from a Lakers game at the Forum. Kevin Kline decides to drive around some traffic by taking back streets. His car breaks down and five gangbangers surround him. He is about to get the shit beat out of him when he is saved by the arrival of ... Read more »