Movie Reviews
The Pursuit of Happyness
This is a well-done, if routine, inspirational flick that tells the true story of Chris Gardner and how he overcame incredible obstacles to become a stockbroker, while living on the streets with his young son. It’s been suitably sanitized and tweaked; Gardner was actually married but living with his girlfriend, the son was the girlfriend’s child, and younger than seen in the movie. The ... Read more »
Targets
We rented this because we had just seen Easy Riders, Raging Bulls on video, and it was mentioned as Peter Bogdanovich’s first movie. It has an odd history. Roger Corman told Bogdanovich he could make a film but he had to use Boris Karloff because Karloff owed him two days’ work, and he had to use some stock footage from The Terror, an awful grinder from 1963 that ... Read more »
Tangled
There’s a short list of movies that I will remember for their sheer visual beauty. Films like Barry Lyndon and Baraka and Days of Heaven and An American in Paris and Ran and Across the Universe. I can now add this one to the list. ... Read more »
Purple Noon
During the last few years I read all five of Patricia Highsmith’s books about Tom Ripley, known collectively as the Ripliad. They are a delight, if you don’t mind amoral mass murders as protagonists. (I don’t mind.) Over the years several of the books have been made into movies, some of them twice. We had seen two of them, and decided to fill in the blanks, starting with this one, the ... Read more »
The Tall Guy
I’m keeping a list of under-appreciated films and this one is going right on it. One day when I get around to it I will publish the list. It came and went with some good reviews, but it deserved better. It’s Emma Thompson’s first movie (she had worked seven years in television), and stars Jeff Goldblum as an American actor working in London. For five years he’s been second banana to a ... Read more »
Talk to Me
I never really know how much is true in these biopics “based on” the life of a real person. I usually assume that the broad strokes are mostly accurate, though details may be omitted for dramatic reasons. This story of the career of Ralph “Petey” Green, a ground-breaking black disc jockey in Washington, DC, in the late ‘60s and into the ‘70s, for instance, never mentions his three ... Read more »
Pulp Fiction
One of those films that changes the way we look at motion pictures. We were so pissed off when that pleasant little potboiler, Forrest Gump, won best picture.
Tales From the Script
Everybody knows the director. Thanks to the French, who came up with this crazy idea that the director is the author of the film, they are almost as big as the stars. But there are four other people who are responsible for how a movie looks and works: the editor, the cinematographer, the production designer, and the writer, and of these the most important is the ... Read more »
Psycho
Possibly the stupidest idea ever to disgrace the American cinema until Adam Sandler came along and re-made Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Gus van Sant re-made Hitchcock’s masterpiece shot for shot, almost. In COLOR. Fucking stupid.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
My first experience of the amoral and oddly sympathetic Ripley. I have the greatest respect for Patricia Highsmith, and intend to read the books very soon. Highly recommended.