Chocolat

The film is in English and was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. It is one of those films that is pure magic. The lovely and fascinating Juliette Binoche comes to a small French village in 1959 with her young daughter and they open a chocolate shop. It is Lent, and everyone is supposed to be denying themselves any pleasure. This is rigidly enforced by the mayor, Alfred Molina, a ... Read more »

Chopin: Desire for Love

I have no idea if Mozart was a supremely talented but obnoxious fellow as portrayed so well by Tom Hulce in Amadeus … but who cares? The story was wonderful, dense, clever, and moving. It worked, dramatically.

I don’t know if Chopin was a fiery, moody, stud-muffin, as he is portrayed in this awful biopic, either, but none of it worked. All the ... Read more »

The Chorus

I guess I agreed with the vast majority of critics on this one, who gave it a relentlessly average 50% on whatever meters they use. You can’t dislike it because it does its job well. It’s just that the job is so routine and totally expected, without an ounce of originality. You’ve seen it a hundred times before. But how can you really dislike a story about a teacher who cares about his ... Read more »

Chris Rock: Never Scared

This was an HBO special. What surprised me is how hard he was on black folks. I mean, you expect a black comedian to take white folks to task, and we sure enough deserve it. But he really lays into some things that many people would see as black stereotypes. The trouble is, most stereotypes came from somewhere, didn’t they? Where I grew up, the black people ... Read more »

Christine

There have been a lot of movies made from the books of Stephen King, ranging from wonderful to truly dreadful. This one falls somewhere in the middle range in terms of story, which can seem pretty silly at times and has a lot of plot holes and unexplained happenings, but I have always felt it is among the very best in terms of visual excitement and creepiness. Spooks and insane butchers ... Read more »

A Christmas Carol

This is another exception to the rule (see The Bad News Bears) that it’s always a bad idea to remake a classic. “A Christmas Carol” is one of the greatest stories of all time. It can withstand a new directorial hand. It might even be a good idea to remake it every twenty years or so, because so many kids won’t look at anything more than ... Read more »

Christmas in July

This trifle is Preston Sturges’ second film, after The Great McGinty, and before he really hit his stride with The Lady Eve. Preston Sturges wrote the play it was based on, “A Cup of Coffee,” in 1931, but it wasn’t produced off-Broadway in New York until 1988. Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell), major-league schmuck and loser, ... Read more »

A Christmas Story

It’s come to the point where we’re getting five or six new “Christmas” movies every year now. Most of them really, really suck. As for television specials, I don’t think anyone could even count them anymore. A few days ago I learned that none other than Kelsey Grammer was following in the footsteps of Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, and Albert Finney in the part of Ebenezer Scrooge. ... Read more »

A Christmas Tale

Families getting together for the holidays is a genre with a long tradition. It is pretty much a given that the family has issues, and this one sure does. The mother is ill and needs a bone marrow transplant, so they are all getting tested to see if anyone is a possible donor. There is huge enmity between one brother and sister. The pleasures to be had in a movie like this are provided by ... Read more »

Christopher Robin

This is not another of those Disney reboots that have been coming so fast and frequently. It’s more like those re-imaginings of Peter Pan we have seen now and then. Simply a bad idea. Old Chris is grown up now, and has forgotten poor Pooh and his friends in the 100-aker wood. I didn’t buy the animation, and I hated Jim Cummings, the voice actor they cast as Pooh. To tell the truth, I was ... Read more »