Movie Reviews
Titles starting with H
Hollywood Ending
Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote some of his most powerful music, including the Ninth Symphony. Akira Kurosawa, one of the best film directors who ever lived, was almost blind when he directed some of his best, most epic work. And has-been director Val Waxman (Woody Allen) is stricken with hysterical blindness just before starting filming of his comeback ... Read more »
Hollywood Homicide
Totally blah Hollywood formula. A waste of Harrison Ford. Ron Shelton has written and directed some of the best sports movies of modern times. He should stick to sports.
Hollywoodland
Here’s a film that tries to connect on several levels, and doesn’t work on any of them. It’s two movies, really, one about George Reeves, who took the part of Superman for a paycheck and then got typecast and blew his brains out. The other is about a two-bit private eye hired by Reeves’ mother who says she thinks he was murdered. We cut back and forth, so we only ... Read more »
A Hologram for the King
Tom Hanks is a salesman sent to Saudi Arabia to sell a holographic computer system to the people who are building a fantastic planned city in the desert, with an expected population of a million and a half. But when he gets there what he finds is a lot of sand, with roads sketched in, a big tent, and only two buildings, just one of which is finished and occupied. And the run-around begins. ... Read more »
A Home At the End of the World
A rather unusual movie made from a novel by the author of The Hours, and quite a departure for Colin Farrell, an Irishman we had just seen playing a tough guy in Intermission. Before this he’s done mostly action pictures, much more macho things, including Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which we haven’t seen yet. ... Read more »
Home From the Hill
When I was looking up the film career of Luana Patten, who starred in some Disney films when she was a child, I found that she had a part in this movie. I had never seen it, which is odd, because the book it was based on was written by a relative of mine. William Humphrey, author of this story and The Ordways, among at least a dozen other books, was Dad’s cousin. ... Read more »
Home Front
Originally titled The Scoundrel’s Wife. The director, Glen Pitre, is an actual Cajun who has made several good movies in the region, some of them in Cajun French. So why does nobody in this film sound like a Cajun? (I grew up in southeast Texas, I know what they sound like.) It starts out interesting, but gets more and more unlikely, and finally loses it ... Read more »
Home Movie
This is from the IMDb, and it sums up very well: “Director Smith visits five unusual homes and talks to the people who built or adapted them. His subjects include an alligator wrangler who lives on a houseboat in a Louisiana bayou; an American actress who made her fortune on Japanese TV and then built a treehouse getaway in Hawaii; an inventor who automated his entire home; a family ... Read more »
Home of the Brave
You want to like this movie because everything it has to say is the truth … and yet all points are driven home with a hammer until you begin to wish some of these people would just shut up and get on with their lives. Irwin Winkler has been the producer of some of the best films ever made, including Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Read more »
Home on the Range
Sometimes I wonder, “What were they thinking?” There’s not a lot on offer here in this very un-Disney feature. Three cows (Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench—Judi Dench?!—and Jennifer Tilly) set out to find big bad cattle rustler Alameda Slim to bring him to justice and save the ranch. That’s it as far as story goes. The visual style owes more to Hanna-Barbera stuff like ... Read more »