Hostage

Robert Crais is one of the best writers around. I’ve read all his books, including the one this movie was based on, and they’re great.

Bruce Willis is one of my favorite action-movie stars. His everyman looks and his attitude are just believable, even though the stunts may not be.

This movie gets off to a great start. Even the opening credits are ... Read more »

Hot Fuzz

The last two films we saw (Hard Candy and Deliver Us From Evil) prompted reviews from me that were more like essays, since they both punched a lot of my rant buttons. Both concerned child molestation, oddly enough. What a relief to be able to write a short rave, about a film containing nothing more than buckets of old-fashioned blood ... Read more »

Hot Millions

I suspect there is nothing more alien to a child or young adult growing up today than what computers were then, as compared to what they are now. Here we have a million-pound “big brain” that fills a big room, has tape drives the size of refrigerators, and is certainly not nearly as powerful nor as fast as a $10 pocket calculator today. This is a caper movie, and I love caper movies, but ... Read more »

Hot Pursuit

(NOTE: I was recently hospitalized for four days. So I did what I did the last time I was there: I watched movies from the small selection they offered. This was an opportunity to take in some that I normally would have passed on. And just as last time, I found they were all movies I was wise to have skipped. At least they didn’t make me any sicker. This is one.)

Aspires to be a ... Read more »

The Hot Rock

Donald E. Westlake wrote fourteen novels featuring John Dortmunder and his gang of hard-luck thieves, and I adore all of them. A new Dortmunder was a cause of celebration, rejoining the familiar characters and settings, such as the back room of the O.J. Bar and Grill, where horrible Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon, “Our Own Brand!” is served, where the capers are planned, where the regulars ... Read more »

Hot Rod

Some films are so bad you almost hate to attack them. It’s like making fun of a retarded person. This one is produced by Lorne Michaels, who ought to be ashamed of himself, not only for insulting me with this drivel, but for keeping that walking corpse, “Saturday Night Live,” shuffling along, belching and farting and making messes on the carpet, for twenty years after it stopped being very ... Read more »

Hotel Artemis

The year is 2028, and Jodie Foster, “The Nurse,” operates a high-tech hospital that caters to rich criminals who can’t afford to be seen in a regular one. She offers all sorts of services, but has strict rules, like no weapons, no non-members, no killing other guests, no farting in the elevator. (Well, if that last one wasn’t a rule, it should have been.) It’s an action thriller with a ... Read more »

Hotel Beau Séjour

As far as I know I’ve never seen a movie made in the Flemish language. In fact, I was only vaguely aware that there was such a thing. This is a ten-part TV series that got off to a really interesting start. A girl wakes up in a hotel room and discovers a bloody corpse in the tub. The dead body is her own. Someone had murdered her. She is a ghost of some kind … ... Read more »

The Hotel New Hampshire

John Irving novels are big, complicated, full of quirky characters and bizarre events that come at you out of the blue. This works okay in a novel, because someone of Irving’s confidence can sell me on it. In a movie, too much summarization and simplification is necessary. The World According to Garp worked pretty well for me, but this doesn’t. It just feels ... Read more »

Hotel Rwanda

This is a hard movie to watch and a hard movie to review. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that this all happened just a decade ago. I don’t know just why it should be hard to accept; it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, it’s not like it’s not happening right now, in Sudan. Maybe it has something to do with hanging on to one’s comfortable faith in ... Read more »