Touching the Void

Yikes! This is one of the most harrowing movies I’ve ever seen. I’m not a fan of mountain climbing or of climbers; I feel they deserve whatever they get, as they set out for excitement, didn’t they? So my sympathies are limited. But in this case … two men set out to climb the highest mountain in the Andes that has never been scaled. This is a semi-documentary, in that the action is ... Read more »

Touch the Sound

Evelyn Glennie, OBE, is a 40-year-old woman, thought by many to be the best solo percussionist in the world. In fact, she pretty much invented the profession of solo percussionist, and was the first to make a living at it. Maybe she still is the only one. And she’s been deaf since the age of 12.

Percussion is surely the earliest music. At its very simplest, it is nothing more than ... Read more »

Total Recall

Is there anything less exciting, more boring, than the sixth fistfight in the same movie? If there is, I can’t think of it. It really tempts me to FF through the whole thing. Here’s a movie that begins with a good premise (the second time we have seen Phil Dick’s “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” filmed), and some good action scenes, and quickly degenerates into mindlessness. I am ... Read more »

Torrid Zone

Entertaining, and forgettable. Hollywood used to churn out these sort of between A and B pictures by the scores, every year. Pick out a few of your best stars, assign a writing team to craft a story about whatever theme some producer thought up that week (in this case: “Bananas! Give me a movie about bananas!”), and in a week or two, start building the sets or use standing sets and begin ... Read more »

Torah! Torah! Torah!

The heartrending story of three Hawaiian Hasidic Hebrew (3H) boys whose talmudic studies are interrupted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We follow the Jaunty Jews as they form their own kosher unit of the Marines and battle their way from island to island (but never on Shabat!) on their way to a showdown over Tokyo Bay, where … wait a minute. That was a typo up there. Sorry. Let’s ... Read more »

Topper Returns

Then as now, sequels are usually a bad idea. This is one of those times. Just a pale shadow of the wit of Topper, this movie bumbles along as a strictly by-the-numbers grind. Abbott & Costello or the Three Stooges would have been right at home in this plot and haunted house setting. Joan Blondell is no match for Constance Bennett, and they couldn’t persuade Cary Grant to show up ... Read more »

Topper

I’ve tried several times to read the comic fantasy and satirical novels of Thorne Smith, without success. The sensibility is so much of another age that I just can’t understand. Dressing for dinner, butlers and maids, it just doesn’t work on the printed page. But it does in the movies, especially in this one. I first saw it when I was very young, and the story of two ... Read more »

Topkapi

I love caper movies, where a group set out to pull off an impossible robbery, and this one by Jules Dassin is the granddaddy of them all. (I’m going to term Rififi—also by Dassin—as the great-granddaddy.) The heist is built up to step-by-step, and it is ingenious. More recent films may be more intricate and done with more technical ... Read more »

Topaz

Hitchcock should have stuck to suspense and given the spy stories a pass. With this and with Torn Curtain before it, he never really seemed to have a handle on the material. It’s adapted from a novel by Leon Uris, and concerns spies from America (John Forsythe, the only real “name” in the cast) and France in the days leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s ... Read more »

Top Of the Lake

This was the first TV miniseries ever to be shown at Sundance. The seven-hour running length was broken up for lunch and another intermission. It is currently running on the Sundance Channel, and I can only hope that not too much has been excised to make room for the goddam commercials.

People have been reminded of both Twin Peaks and Read more »