Movie Reviews
Titles starting with L
Live Free or Die Hard
This was the fourth, and the last of the watchable Die Hard movies, six years before the terrible A Good Day to Die Hard. Yes, it’s getting a little tired, and yes, most of the action scenes are way beyond preposterous, but it’s possible to have fun here if you don’t think about it too much.
The most interesting thing about it, ... Read more »
The Live Ghost
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. A captain hires them to Shanghai sailors. They end up being the last ones Shanghaied, and have to avoid the crew’s vengeance. They think they have killed the drunken first mate, who falls into a vat of white paint and comes back to haunt them. Not one of their very best.
The Lives of Others
What’s the worst job in the world? Sewage worker? Prostitute? Butt-buddy to Donald Trump? I’ve got one that can beat any of those (though it would be a photo finish with the last one): Spy. There is no filthier employment to be had anywhere. You deal in lies and betrayal, and even if you begin with a pure heart, even if you believe you’re fighting for life, liberty, and the pursuit of ... Read more »
Locke
A man gets into his BMW at night at a massive construction site and starts out toward London, about an hour and a half away. He is the man in charge of this construction. He starts making calls and getting calls on his hands-free phone. A gigantic concrete pour, the largest (non-military) one ever in Europe, is to start at 5:30 AM, and he has to be there to ... Read more »
The Lodger: A story of the London Fog
First, a word about prints. We got a 4-disc set with 20 of the earlier Hitchcock films on them. I wondered what the quality would be like, as these were certainly public domain prints, but they turned out to be perfectly watchable … except for this one. After five minutes I knew I couldn’t go any longer. So I hunted up a copy at the library, and struck gold. This one was mastered from the ... Read more »
Logan Lucky
I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this. I came in with high expectations, since it was directed by Steven Soderbergh, the man behind the Ocean’s movies, 11, 12, and 13. I enjoyed those enormously, unlikely as they were. I love caper movies, and these were some of the best.
This one was even better than I had hoped. Someone suggested this one ... Read more »
Lolita
As Stephen King discovered to his sorrow when seeing the final cut of The Shining, a Stanley Kubrick film is a Stanley Kubrick film. No real room for anyone else. Valdimir Nabokov, the author of the book was hired to write the screenplay, but it was almost entirely junked. I’ve never read the book but I know that many things were changed. It was re-made in 1997, ... Read more »
London Suite
(TV movie) Neil Simon. America’s wittiest living playwright, no question, and one of the funniest of all time. Barefoot in the Park. The Sunshine Boys. Last of the Red Hot Lovers. The Goodbye Girl. Biloxi Blues. And the two that preceded this: Plaza Suite, in New York, California Suite, at the Beverly Hills ... Read more »
The Lone Ranger
I’ve got to stop listening to “the Buzz.” You know, the consensus that emerges among critics and cinema wonks that a particular film is a disaster. It happened with John Carter, which wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone was saying. I feel that the same thing happened here. The director, Gore Verbinski, went so far as to publish a rant where he maintained that the ... Read more »
The Lonesome Dove Saga
Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer-winning novel Lonesome Dove was made into a four-part TV mini-series in 1989, single-handedly reviving the Western genre, and became one of the most-watched shows of the decade. I just adored everything about it, and have now seen it several times.
McMurtry re-visited the story three times, and all the books were made into ... Read more »