Movie Reviews

The Honourable Woman

(UK, 2014)

Here we have an eight-part TV series from the BBC, and it’s a corker. Maggie Gyllenhaal is the Jewish head of a communications company that works to help bring some harmony to the Middle East by installing fiberoptic cables in Palestinian territory. Her father was assassinated right in front of her and her brother, at a banquet when they were young children. And eight years previous she ... Read more »

Words and Pictures

(2013)

Clive Owen is an alcoholic teacher of honors English at an exclusive prep school. He was a writer, but hasn’t written anything in many years. Juliette Binoche is an abstract expressionist artist with a substantial reputation in her field, but with a terrible case of rheumatoid arthritis, hobbling about on crutches. She is finding it very difficult to paint. She takes a job teaching honors ... Read more »

Maleficent

(2014)

I have always been drawn to Disney villainesses. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because the bad guy is just about always more interesting than the hero. Madame Medusa, Ursula the Sea Witch, Queen Grimhilde, and especially my darling Cruella De Vil, they’re all fascinating to watch. And way up there on the list has always been Maleficent. So when I heard they were making a movie told ... Read more »

Jayne Mansfield’s Car

(2012)

Alabama, 1969. Robert Duvall is the patriarch of a fairly well-to-do family. He was once married to a woman, the mother of his four adult children, but she divorced him and married an Englishman and moved to London and had more kids. Now she has died, and the English arrive in Alabama for the funeral. Cultural clashes between the well-educated and upper class Brits and the almost-redneck ... Read more »

We’re the Millers

(2013)

A man who deals small quantities of marijuana is forced to go to Mexico and pick up a load of grass. Since a single man would draw too much attention, he hires a stripper to pretend to be his wife, and they convince two younger people to pose as their children. They set out in a big RV, trying hard to look like normal middle-class people. But when they get to Mexico, they find out the load ... Read more »

The Unsuspected

(1947)

Claude Rains is a radio personality who tells stories of true crime, sort of like all those hundreds of TV shows these days that do the same thing, only re-enacted. He is scheming to commit the perfect crime, which will leave him very rich. We all know what happens to “perfect crimes” in those Code days, don’t we? I watched this because of Rains, and the director, Michael Curtiz, one of ... Read more »

Frenzy

(1972)

Hitchcock returned to England to make his best movie since The Birds. Most of it takes place in London’s Covent Garden, where Eliza Doolittle hawked her flowers in My Fair Lady. They were still selling fruits and vegetables there in 1972, which made for a lot of colorful outdoor scenes. I understand the whole area has been redeveloped into a shopping and tourist attraction. This is a ... Read more »

Freeway

(1996)

My only complaint about this movie is the opening credits. Like Roman Polanski’s wonderful The Fearless Vampire Killers, too much is given away in the opening credits. Killers opens with some real lame animation, tacked on by the studio, I think, that gives away all the best jokes, like the gay vampire, the Jewish vampire (who naturally ... Read more »

Grand Prix

(1966)

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 »

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit