Movie Reviews
Titles starting with H
The Hunting of the President
This is basically the story of Whitewater, the biggest non-scandal of the 20th and maybe any century. There was never anything there, not a shred of evidence of anything, and yet the radical right spent $80 million of your money to find that out, and finally got one little scrap of red meat after about 5 years of turning over rocks and listening to the worms that crawled out, and used that ... Read more »
The Hunting Party
Simon Hunt (Richard Gere), a down-at-heels reporter, and his cameraman, Duck (Terrence Howard), set out to find and interview one Radoslav Bogdanović—known as “The Fox”—in the Bosnian enclave of Srpska (no wonder the fought a war; there must have been a severe vowel shortage in Yugoslavia, and everybody wanted to get as many as they could). The war is over, but most of the ... Read more »
The Hurt Locker
At Metacritic, where the pros rated this 94 and the viewers 8.4, there were some dissenting voices that gave it a 1 or a 0. Some of these were soldiers serving in Iraq, and some even served in the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit depicted here. They said the movie is bullshit, doesn’t show real life, and some felt it was insulting to the troops. In particular, they noted, the EOD ... Read more »
Husbands and Wives
Two couples (Sidney Pollack and Judy Davis, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow). Close friends. They are going to dinner, but first Sid and Judy announce that they are leaving each other. Mia is freaked out. Sid starts up with a ditsy aerobics teacher (Lysette Anthony) half his age. Mia yentas Judy into a relationship with Liam Neeson. Mia then realizes she has a crush on him, too. Woody flirts ... Read more »
Hush
In 1967 there was a top-notch thriller titled Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman threatened by a killer. She ends up using her blindness to her advantage, and after several close calls, manages to kill him. There was another similar films in 1971, See No Evil, where Mia Farrow was a blind woman who is unaware that ... Read more »
Hustle & Flow
Right off the bat I have to say that I don’t believe the central premise of the movie for a minute. You can say, rightly, that socio-economic pressures drive young black men into poor career choices such as dealing drugs and being in gangs. But I believe that being a pimp requires a rottenness of the soul, a deep-down hatred for women, and thus, practically by definition, you ... Read more »
Hyde Park on Hudson
It is known that FDR had a romantic affair with Marguerite “Missy” Lehand, his private secretary. Whether it was sexual or not is still debated. It is also known that he had a previous affair, before his polio, and that was the reason Eleanor cut him off and remained his wife in name only. Much, much later a cache of letters and diaries from Margaret Suckley, his fifth cousin, was ... Read more »
Hysteria
They say that until 1900, 1910, around in there, for most things that ailed you it was smarter never to call a doctor, never to get anywhere near a hospital. I’m not kidding; they were more likely to kill you than if you stayed home. Other than a few herbal remedies (and not by any means all of those) the standard treatments were either useless or actually guaranteed to make you worse. ... Read more »