Blue Valentine

Here’s a couple who have been married for six years, and it’s coming apart. We flash back to their meeting and falling in love—a bit confusingly for me, at first, until I noticed Ryan Gosling’s receding hairline—contrasting it with the mess they are in now. He has no ambition, he’s perfectly happy to have things just as they were when they met, and is incapable of understanding that people ... Read more »

Blue Velvet

What can I possibly say about this movie that hasn’t already been said? It got mediocre reviews when it came out, but people soon realized that it was one of those seminal movies that changed everything. After David Lynch got the awful Dune adaptation out of his system, he returned to his strange roots by making this. There had never been anything quite like it. ... Read more »

The Blues Brothers

The movie clearly set the record for number of cars destroyed in its final car chase. They had a full-time garage to restore the cars to drivable condition. I wondered how much that all cost, and it turns out, not much. Not for the cars, anyway. They bought a lot of clapped-out highway patrol cars from California, for $400 a pop. Junked them afterward. Filming the chase in the city streets ... Read more »

Bob le flambeur

One of the seminal caper movies, like Rififi the previous year. I must say right off that I don’t think I ever encountered a Frenchman named Bob, in all my reading and viewing. Considering they call Robert “roh-BARE,” I don’t see how the diminutive could happen in their language. I assume they’re imitating Americans, which was a hip thing to do in France in the ... Read more »

Bob Roberts

This is an interesting movie to watch again in this incredible Age of Trump. Not that Tim Robbins (who wrote, directed, and starred) really resembles the bloviating blowhard with the bad hair. Their styles are very different. Bob is self-effacing, modest, quiet. But it’s the phenomenon of the “outsider,” the man who isn’t a politician and attracts a truly fanatical following.

Bob ... Read more »

Body Heat

A mournful saxophone. Lots of cigarettes. The tinkle of ice in a cocktail glass. Mist, smoke, fog, long shadows … a sultry woman, a world-weary, cynical man. Faces half in darkness. Venetian blinds … (Why Venetian blinds? Because of the way they throw shadows, I guess.) And sweat. Buckets and buckets of sweat. There you have Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan’s homage to ... Read more »

Body of Lies

About halfway through this movie I realized that I’d read this story. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember who wrote it. I read a lot, and don’t retain plots very well. I sometimes get to Chapter 3 or 4 before realizing I’ve been here before. So when I got home I looked back at my list of BOOKS READ, and sure enough, there it was, some years ago. It’s by David Ignatius, who is not on ... Read more »

Body Snatchers

Four movies are reviewed here, from 1956, 1978, 1993, and 2007. The article was written in 2007.

We just saw The Invasion, the fourth iteration of a Collier’s Magazine story by Jack Finney that later became a novel and then one of the most well-remembered creepy movies from the pulpish days of 1950s science fiction. While watching it I was seized by a ... Read more »

Bohemian Rhapsody

I guess this mostly revolves around what you think about Freddie Mercury, Queen, and Freddie’s magnum opus, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” For myself, I think Mercury was a major talent, but I was never really a fan of Queen. As for the song, I think it is highly overrated. Every time I hear it I get impatient for it to end. And the lyrics? Mama! Killed a man. Bismallah! Scaramouche, Scaramouche, ... Read more »

Bolt

Disney’s newest all-talking, all-CGI, all celebrity voices (John Travolta as the super-dog, Bolt, with Miley Cyrus as the little girl) entry in the big-ticket animation sweepstakes. We’re getting at least half a dozen of them per year now. Some are actually good. Some are masterpieces, like WALL*E. This isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a creditable piece of work. (I ... Read more »