Movie Reviews
Paris, Texas
Harry Dean Stanton, man! I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be bad in a movie, though he’s been in some bad movies, like everybody. But this is the best I’ve ever seen him. He’s playing against type, because usually there is at least a hint of menace in his craggy face (though he played an angel in One Magic Christmas, which just goes ... Read more »
Paris, je t’aime
A real oddity: 18 short films set in Paris. When I say short, consider that the screen running time, less credits, is about 115 minutes. That means that each of the 22 directors (several were co-directed) has about 6 minutes and 38 seconds to say his or her piece. You obviously don’t tell a complicated story in that length (though some, like the Coen Brothers, manage a funny anecdote), you ... Read more »
Paris 36
A trifle that never quite succeeded for me. A grou p of workers try to rescue a failing theater. I have no real experience and/or taste for French vaudeville and popular music of that era. I suspect that French people will love this a great deal more than I did. I have to say that the look of the film is first-rate, though, and it was filmed entirely on a vast set outside Prague! The ... Read more »
ParaNorman
A bit of a disappointment. I wanted to like this more than I did. It was fabulously made, and it’s real hard to believe that it was done in stop-action animation in these days of CGI. But it was, by a company here in Oregon. Hillsboro, to be precise, which is a few miles west of Portland, part of the metro area. And it is the first stop-action film to be made in 3D. Moving all the hundreds ... Read more »
Panic in Year Zero!
Here’s a movie that doesn’t screw around getting into the action. For five minutes Ray Milland and his wife Jean Hagen and son Frankie Avalon and daughter Joan Freeman are a happy family setting out in their gigantic Mercury Monterrey, pulling a camping trailer into the hills north of Los Angeles. There is a bright flash of light, and everything changes. They see the mushroom cloud to the ... Read more »
Panic in the Streets
This is a reasonably intelligent and very well-made thriller concerning the threat of pneumonic plague. Unlike its Black Death cousin, which needs rats and fleas to propagate, the pneumonic variety can be spread through the air. It’s surprising to me that we don’t get more of it. Here, it’s brought into New Orleans, where most of the movie was filmed on location. The complication is that ... Read more »
Pan’s Labyrinth
A few weeks ago we were at Graumann’s and saw some five coming attractions. Four of them seemed to be based on “graphic novels.” Actually, one was based on Spiderman, which was still called a comic book when it debuted, before everything got all artsy-fartsy. I’ll tell you what I think, my friends. Comic books are bubble gum. Now, you can ... Read more »
The Palm Beach Story
Not one of Preston Sturges’s best, in my opinion. It’s a bit hard to get up a lot of sympathy for the Claudette Colbert character, who spends most of the movie scheming to get rich. It’s all for hubby, who she insists she is divorcing, of course, and we all know they’ll get back together, but her change of heart is unconvincing. The middle section of the story is very annoying, with a ... Read more »
The Paleface
Buster Keaton two-reeler. Not one of Buster’s best. Aside from the racial stereotyping which isn’t really funny any more (though not horribly offensive, either), there’s just not a lot of comic invention. This is available on a DVD with the feature Go West.
The Painted Veil
Shot on location in China, in that river valley in Guangxi that looks so gorgeous it might have been computer-generated for a fantasy film. The year is 1925, a turbulent time in China (though, come to think of it, has there ever been a time in China when it was not turbulent?), and a cholera epidemic is raging in the hinterlands while various political factions and warlords are beginning ... Read more »