The Honourable Woman

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 »

The Hook

It seemed like a pretty interesting movie, up to about a third of the way through. Four G.I.s in Korea are charged with loading fuel drums onto a small freighter and destroying everything else that might be of use to the advancing North Korean Army. An enemy plane flies over and strafes them, burning one alive. But the plane is hit. A parachute opens, and the remaining soldiers take the ... Read more »

The Hoose-Gow

Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Here’s one made on the cheap. There’s a minimal prison set, and the rest takes place on a road gang. The extended bit: Ollie drives a pickax through the radiator of the visiting governor’s car. To plug the leak they fill it with rice. The rice boils out, and soon everyone in sight is playing tit for tat with handfuls of boiled rice, seldom hitting what they are ... Read more »

Hope and Glory

Hope and Glory (1987) (UK) (USA) John Boorman was eight years old when war was declared and the bombing of London, known as the Blitz, began. And he has made those experiences into a unique take on it all. He shows it from a child’s point of view. And the crazy thing is, unless your own house has been destroyed or you’ve just lost a loved one, war can be fun! It creates instant playgrounds ... Read more »

Hopscotch

Walter Matthau is a CIA agent who has just been pulled from the field and put in an office job. It’s a purely political and personal decision by Ned Beatty, his incompetent boss, who hates him. Walter decides he’s not going to stand for it, and starts writing his memoirs, mailing them in a chapter at a time, telling all the dirt he knows, where the bodies are buried. And the CIA tries to ... Read more »

Hopscotch

(Second review) Walter Matthau was one of my favorite actors, both in his eight movies with his friend Jack Lemmon (they are buried side by side in the Westwood Cemetery) and the many others he made. The list of terrific movies he made is a long one, including things like Charade, The Fortune Cookie (won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), A ... Read more »

Horns

This was made from a novel by Joe Hill, which is the name Stephen King’s oldest son writes under. Just thought I’d get that out of the way at the beginning. I respect him for not playing the “son-of” card until he had already established himself.

If the last twenty minutes or so were rewritten, this could have been a good scary movie. Daniel Radcliffe is in a living hell. His ... Read more »

Horsefeathers

This is one of Groucho’s least interesting character names. Professor Quincy Wagstaff just doesn’t measure up to Rufus T. Firefly, Otis P. Driftwood, Hugo Z. Hackenbush, J. Cheever Loophole, or Wolf J. Flywheel. But the Marx Brothers never made a really bad film, though Love Happy is not very good. This I’d say is in the mid-range. I personally think Read more »

Horton Hears a Who!

First reaction: Why does everything have to be so friggin’ huge these days? The great Chuck Jones did this in 1970, staying exactly with the Dr. Seuss story, narrated by the great Hans Conried, and it is a classic. But it’s 2008, this is CGI animation, and it has megastars Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell. Naturally, it’s all over the place, full of frantic action, ... Read more »