Movie Reviews
The Twelve Chairs
Mel Brooks made this right after The Producers, and it wasn’t a roaring success. But I’ve always liked it. It’s much different from any of his other films, telling the old Russian tale of a set of dining room furniture, one chair of which contains a fortune in jewels concealed against the depredations of the Bolsheviks. Ron Moody of Read more »
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
First, I need to apologize to Lee Daniels. When I saw his name above the title, I thought this was one hell of an egotist. Then I learned that Warner Brothers, who had inherited the defunct Lubin Company, was challenging his right to use the title. Why? Because there was a film of the same title in 1916!! Not only that, but the fucking film doesn’t even exist ... Read more »
Skyline
An alien invasion film that gets maximum use from its CGI critters, but the story is so lame I’m surprised I finished it.
The Bling Ring
It’s an incredible but true story. This group of mostly girls broke into the homes of celebrities and robbed them blind. Not only that, but with some of them they did it again, and again, and again. What? Nobody had any private security to come with an armed response, like all those signs you see in the Hollywood Hills? Apparently not. Some of them, like Paris Hilton, had such an ... Read more »
Foolproof
A neat little heist film, and I dearly love heist films. In a way, I guess I have something in common with the guys in the movie. What I do is follow along, almost pretending that I’m part of the gang. What they do, they set themselves a problem, some criminal enterprise, and try to figure out how they would go about pulling it off. They never do these robberies, see, but they map it all ... Read more »
Mystery Men
A clever satire on the current fascination with superheroes. These are the also-rans, wannabes with weird “superpowers” that actually don’t work. Ben Stiller is more or less the leader of the little gang, and he calls himself Mr. Furious. The idea is that when he gets really, really angry, he is unstoppable. And he keeps threatening to get really, really angry, warning people they better ... Read more »
The Beginning or the End
Here’s an interesting bit of history. It’s an early docudrama concerning the creation of the first atomic bomb. All the actors portray real people, such as Hume Cronyn as Robert Oppenheimer, the conscience of Los Alamos, and Brian Donlevy as General Leslie Groves, the man who was probably most responsible to pushing the Manhattan Project to completion. The details of the bomb itself were ... Read more »
The Cheap Detective
Screenplay by Neil Simon, starring Peter Falk with small parts by a real slew of actors, like Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Ann-Margret, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and many, many more. There’s lots of jokes and references to other movies and it’s fun for a while, but gets a little tiresome during the second half.
The Makeover
Julia Stiles is Hannah Higgins, David Walton is Elliot Doolittle. She is cultured, educated, he is blue collar. There are other clues if you haven’t already got it that this is a take-off on Pygmalion with the genders reversed. It goes along fairly well, then gets a little overboard as he becomes a viable candidate for mayor of Boston. Naturally romance gets ... Read more »
Surf’s Up
Surfing penguins. Okay. It’s a standard story of an underdog rookie out on the waves being hounded by an egotistical champion. The little rockhopper connects with surfing legend Z, who has been missing and presumed dead. Most of the fun here comes from Jeff Bridges as the rather stoned old pro.