The Loved One

Long before Six Feet Under there was The Loved One. Not that they have that much in common, as SFU is about a compassionate, family-run funeral home, and TLO is about the excesses of the Death Business, particularly in Southern California, very much lampooning such overblown and ... Read more »

Lovely and Amazing

Four women, a mother and three daughters, all of them seeking attention, trying to cope with their insecurities. It’s all well done, well acted, and very uncomfortable. But it is also very honest, if you like that. If I’d been in a different mood I’d probably have liked it better … and I do recommend it.

The Lovely Bones

I really liked the book. The movie, not so much. I often think that some books simply should not be made into movies, and this is one of them. Our narrator, a 14-year-old girl, tells us up front that she’s been murdered, and she is in some sort of limbo Heaven. In a book you can imagine this. In a movie, you see somebody else’s vision, and of course the SFX are amazing and beautiful, but ... Read more »

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Shakespeare’s comedies are silly. All of them. Take the plot of this one: Four dudes decide to swear off women for three years and devote themselves to the insane pleasures of study. Yeah, right, and you sort of know that one ain’t gonna last beyond Act Two. The delights here, as always in these plays, is the ... Read more »

Loving

I just have to vent a little before actually reviewing this film. Everyone knows who Rosa Parks was, but I’ll bet very few people who have not actually studied the civil rights movement would know the names of Richard and Mildred Loving. In 1958 they went to Washington, D.C., to get married. They returned to their home in Virginia, and not long after, in the middle of the night, the cops ... Read more »

A Loving Father

Gerard Depardieu has just won the Nobel Prize for literature. (I know, it’s hard to swallow, but what the hell). On his way to Stockholm on a motorcycle he gets into an accident, is kidnapped by his son, played by Depardieu’s real son. The son is an ex-junkie, and blames Dad, as all junkies blame somebody else. Dad was a real prick, no doubt, and still is, if you believe that fatherhood is ... Read more »

Loving Vincent

Pixar Studios have no greater fan than I, and I thought Coco was a terrific film. But this is the one that probably should have won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Probably. I’m pretty sure. The thing is, Coco, though it was gorgeous and stunningly detailed, didn’t show me anything new. This one does. It is made from 65,000 Read more »

Low Winter Sun

Based on a 2006 British mini-series. Looked interesting.

1. Pilot. And it is interesting, so far. It’s set in grungy old Detroit, which was pretty fucked-up already when I spent a summer working there in 1965. It’s gone downhill since then, went bankrupt a few weeks ago, and it looks just awful. Right off the bat two men kill another one and drop him in ... Read more »

The Lucky Ones

Three soldiers return from Iraq, all of them damaged in some way. Rachel McAdams was shot in the leg, and it’s not healing well. Michael Peña is impotent. Tim Robbins is older, and functions as the father figure as the three hook up and pool their resources for a trip across America. This is a rather familiar story arc with discoveries and disillusionment, but it’s all handled well.

Lucy

A made-for-TV move, the story of Lucille Ball and Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III, better known as Desi Arnaz. Lucy is played very well by Rachel York, and Danny Pino is good as Desi, though neither of them look much like their subjects. That’s okay with me, as long as they capture the mannerisms and speech, and they do. It follows Lucy from her youth in a small town in New York, to ... Read more »