Chronicle

Three teenage boys crawl into a hole and encounter some glowing thingamajig. (Who cares what it is? It’s just a plot device, as good as any other hocus-pocus.) When they come out they have picked up telekinetic ability. And here’s where it gets neat. Do they come up with some great plan to use these powers for good, or evil? No, they’re just guys. They pick up rocks with their minds and ... Read more »

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

More of the same … but I liked it a little better. No time is spent with the traveling to the country business, or the mysterious wardrobe. The children are whisked off to Narnia right smartly, where they discover that centuries have passed and everyone they knew is long dead and gone, except maybe for Aslan, the wise and powerful lion. The kids are older this time, and have experienced ... Read more »

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Somehow I had been under the impression that this hadn’t been a big hit. Turns out I was wrong. It made almost ¾ of a billion dollars, worldwide. Naturally there was a sequel, and a third is on the way. I never read the books, so I watched with no preconceptions. (I think I recall some sort of hoo-hah over religion, but I ignored it, and I didn’t see anything particularly religious about ... Read more »

A Chump at Oxford

“Chumps,” actually, since both Stan and Ollie go to Jolly Olde England. In their usual bumbling, accidental way, the boys foil a bank robbery. The grateful manager asks them what they would like as a reward, and they say they’d like an education, so they can be “illiterate.” Off they go to Oxford, where as Yanks they are mercilessly hazed by the students there. They spend almost a whole ... Read more »

The Chumscrubber

I suppose it’s theoretically possible to interest me in a film about the problems of rich, spoiled, BMW-driving, pill-popping teenage sociopaths studying to be psychopaths—sort of like we used to move from being juniors to being seniors—and the empty, self-absorbed, egomaniacal suburban professionals who may or may not have molded them but certainly didn’t hinder their ... Read more »

The Cider House Rules

I rented this again because I’d just read John Irving’s book about the making of it: My Movie Business. It was quite a saga, even longer than the process of making my own movie, Millennium, though while we went through six directors, Irving only had four. There was George Roy Hill, another I can’t recall, then Philip Borsos who, believe ... Read more »

Cinderella

A live-action re-telling of the Disney classic animated one. But some changes were made that I don’t think benefited the story. Here, Prince Charming (“call me Kit!”) meets her before the ball at the palace, and during the ball gets some quality time with her before she has to flee at the stroke of midnight. This may be better in the real world, but of course there is nothing real about ... Read more »

Cinderella Man

As drama this is top-notch. As history … well, I’m not a boxing historian, but a little research shows me that it’s half right and half bullshit.

The correct part is that Jim Braddock was a genuinely good man. He did have early success, did go into a tailspin during the Great Depression, worked the docks when he could, got on relief when he had to. And paid the ... Read more »