Grindhouse

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, like a lot of movie buffs, love bad movies. The difference, I think, is that they don’t think they’re bad. They like them for themselves, not for the campy pleasure of seeing how awful they are. They like Hong Kong chop-socky, Japanese let’s-stomp-Tokyo, and those awful sexploitation grinders from the ... Read more »

Grizzly Man

I can’t really review this as a film, because I am too emotionally tied up in the subject of it and I didn’t watch it all. So discount my opinion by that factor.

Did you ever meet someone who, from the first instant, you just knew you hated? Despised, loathed, abhorred everything about him? Timothy “Treadwell” is such a man for me. Or was, because he got ... Read more »

The Group

Eight (or was it nine?) young women graduate from Vassar (or something like it, anyway) in the 1930s and we follow their lives up until near the start of the War. The acting talent here comprises most of the most talented young women just starting out in Hollywood in the ‘60s, including Candice Bergen. It all felt a little rushed to me, because there were too many stories to tell and not ... Read more »

Grown Up Movie Star

Tatiana Maslany has mentioned in an interview somewhere that, aside from the delights of being able to play five major characters and a dozen minor ones in Orphan Black, another reason she was happy to take the job is that she would be playing adults. She has one of those faces, as well as the terrific acting talent, to pull off playing ... Read more »

Grumpy Old Men

It’s only a so-so comedy, though it has its moments. The story is faintly ridiculous, with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as neighbors who hate each other, play sophomoric tricks on each other, and get into a competition to see who can nail the beautiful, free-spirited new neighbor, Ann-Margret. Jack was 68, Walter was 73, and Ann Hyphen was 52. Conceivable, I guess, but hardly likely. But ... Read more »

The Guard

I sometimes wonder how they do it. All over Europe and in other places around the world, people are making damn good films that should make the Hollywood sausage machine deeply shamed. They scrounge together some money. This one had at least a dozen companies listed in the opening credits, plus something called An Bord Scannán na hÉireann (the Irish Film Board, for you non-Gaelic ... Read more »

Guardians of the Galaxy

I decided to make an exception to my No More Goddam Comic Book Movies! rule just this once, because the reviews were good, and they were good for reasons that appealed to me. It was supposed to be witty, self-aware, full of snappy dialogue and non-solemn characters. I enjoyed those qualities in the first Iron Man movie. Maybe this one ... Read more »

Guess Who

This is sort of “inspired by” the 1967 groundbreaking Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a movie I never really liked much. Yeah, it was an important movie, it got people talking and thinking, and it probably did a lot of good, but it was sort of a stiff, dramatically. Hard to watch it now. Which is good. The fact that a “re-make” in 2005 could only work as a comedy is wonderful, when you think ... Read more »

Guiliani Time

The officers who thrust a toilet plunger up Abner Louima’s ass, puncturing his colon and bladder (and costing the city of New York $8,750,000) are said to have shouted “It’s Giuliani Time!” as they sodomized him. Well, bend over, America, he’s after your ass this time. This is not a particularly good documentary, it seemed to slant ... Read more »

The Guilt Trip

I’m always up for a Barbra Streisand movie, even if it doesn’t turn out to be very good, because I’ve never seen her be bad. That is, she has such a powerful screen presence that even in material that is less than first rate, I can’t keep my eyes off of her and she manages to make something out of it. And this isn’t a bad one. She is paired up with Seth Rogan, who mostly acts as her ... Read more »