Freedom Writers

Here’s a heart-warming movie, based on real events (but probably jazzed up a bit, as these things tend to be), that depressed the hell out of me. There’s nothing really new here: Hilary Swank, as real-life teacher Erin Gruwell, enters a classroom in Long Beach on her first day as a teacher in 1994, two years after the Rodney King riots … a classroom I wouldn’t walk ... Read more »

Freeheld

In New Jersey, what most of the country would call the County Commission is known as the Board of Chosen Freeholders. I assume they used to have to be land holders, but now anybody can run. Each county has its own rules, and its own number of freeholders, up to nine of them.

In Ocean County it is five. And in 2005 they turned down the application of Laurel Hester (played by Julianne ... Read more »

Freeway

My only complaint about this movie is the opening credits. Like Roman Polanski’s wonderful The Fearless Vampire Killers, too much is given away in the opening credits. Killers opens with some real lame animation, tacked on by the studio, I think, that gives away all the best jokes, like the gay vampire, the Jewish vampire (who naturally ... Read more »

French Kiss

Meg Ryan can’t accompany her fiancée, Timothy Hutton, on a trip to Paris because of a terrible fear of flying. So he goes alone, and he soon informs her, by trans-Atlantic phone call, that he has fallen wildly in love with a French girl. (If there were text messages back then, he probably would have broken up with her that way, that’s how much of a shit-heel he is.) She is determined to ... Read more »

The Freshman

Harold Lloyd was just as much a comic genius as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but not as well-known. Ironically, it’s at least partly because he was such an astute businessman. He retained the copyrights to most of his movies, and asked a price too high for ‘50s television, which was showing many things that were free for the asking. But interest in him was renewed in the ‘60s when … ... Read more »

Friday Night Lights

God, football is a shitty sport. Brutal, violent, stupid, played by people so padded they don’t even look human anymore. Only ice hockey and boxing are worse, and it’s a close call. This is a movie that is almost overwhelmed by its technique (see The Son). Almost every shot is very close, few shots last more than 3 seconds, many much ... Read more »

Friends With Money

Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Jennifer Aniston. How could you go wrong with such a cast? Especially the first three. Maybe by telling an improbable story featuring four women I don’t like—and their husbands, who all seem younger than them, and who don’t have much to do. Aniston is friends with all three, the only one unmarried. She used to be a teacher, but now she’s ... Read more »

From Here to Eternity

I realized that, though I had seen some bits here and there, I had never seen this entire movie. It won a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture. It is very steamy for 1953, with adultery and the famous beach scene where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are crashed into by a big wave. There is a sub-plot with Montgomery Clift romancing a “dance hall girl,” (a prostitute in the novel) Donna ... Read more »

From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love (1963) (UK) This is my personal favorite of the early Bonds. I like the exotic locations in Turkey, and the villains of Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya, and Vladek Sheybal. The movies are settling into a comfortable pattern, with Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny flirting with James as he tosses his hat onto the rack, Bernard Lee as M, and crotchety old Desmond Llewelyn as Q. This ... Read more »