The Big Fix

I believe one should, if at all possible, separate an artist from his or her works. Gaugin was a piece of shit, but I still like his paintings. Wagner was despicable, but that doesn’t make The Ride of the Valkyries bad music. Mel Gibson is an anti-Semitic turd, but he’s made some good movies. Tom Cruise is a total nut, but he’s a good actor. These are extreme ... Read more »

Big Game

It’s the most expensive movie ever made in Finland, and in an odd way, sort of reassuring to me. I mean, we all know that just tons of really crappy movies are churned out in places like Japan, India, Hong Kong, but if you’re like me you subconsciously think of Europe as somehow more serious, sober, literary. Not true. When they want to, Europeans can make movies just as stupid as your ... Read more »

A Big Hand for the Little Lady

I don’t imagine there are many film buffs out there who don’t know about the surprise ending of this one, but I’m not going to spoil it here. All I can really say is that I am a lover of movies about con games, and this is one of the best ever made. It had me fooled. All the actors are wonderful, and it’s a real change of pace for Henry Fonda and Joanne Woodward.

The Big Heat

Fritz Lang can be seen as the bridge between German Expressionism, which he helped found, and film noir, which he was instrumental in developing. His masterpiece, M, is considered by many to be the prototypical film noir, and I don’t disagree.

This movie was pretty hard-core for the time it was made. Glenn Ford is a tough cop investigating the suicide of ... Read more »

The Big Lift

Here’s a really interesting movie, though not really a great one. It was filmed entirely in Berlin which, five years after the end of WWII, was still picking up the pieces after the Allied bombings. Actually, much of the city was still in ruins, and they make great backdrops for the movie. So the Russians decided to blockade West Berlin, cutting off all road and rail and river traffic, ... Read more »

Big Little Lies

An HBO series created by David E. Kelley with a fantastic cast. Listen to this: Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Alexander Skarsgård, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep. It follows a group of very rich mothers in Monterrey, California, jockeying to attain the very best stuff for their offspring. Think Felicity Huffman buying a good SAT score for her child. These women would do ... Read more »

Big Man Japan

Poor, poor Tokyo. As I’m sure you know, the city has been plagued by monsters ever since Gojira (better known on these shores as Godzilla) kicked it apart way back in 1954. If it ain’t one critter, it’s another, from Ghidorah the three-headed monster, Mathura, and Rodan, to Dogora the space monster, Mechagodzilla, and the worst of the bunch, Hedora the smog monster. There have been many ... Read more »

Big Night

When we were traveling in our motor home we hooked it up at the Ocean Breeze trailer park in Oceano, California. We were about a hundred yards from the beach. Next to the park was an empty building. People started renovating it, which took an amazingly long time, but when it opened it was a pizza parlor. Behind it all was an old man who spoke no English, and whose plan was to introduce ... Read more »

The Big Picture

This 1989 movie was the directorial debut of the guy who turned out to be the best there is at a very small sub-genre, the “mockumentary.” Christopher Lord Haden-Guest (yes, he is a peer of the realm) was a writer for SNL and The National Lampoon during their glory days, then co-wrote the amazing progenitor of the genre: This is Spinal ... Read more »