Movie Reviews
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
I can’t think of a comedy movie that has this many superlatives. Best sacrilegious musical number (“Every Sperm is Sacred”). Best total gross-out scene (Mr. Creosote eats one more “wafer-thin mint” and explodes). Best gory scene (live organ donations). There are half a dozen other masterpieces here. Eric Idle’s “Galaxy Song.” The Grim Reaper. The British officer class in the Zulu War, ... Read more »
Mike Fright
The gang forms The International Silver String Submarine Band and wreak havoc in a radio station before performing a pretty good rendition of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
I’ve seen this several times, the first time at what used to be Graumann’s Chinese Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard, most recently to take the taste of blood out of my mouth after watching The Passion of the Christ, for my sins. It’s one of the best comedies ever made. Now I can never see Christ nailed on the cross without that lovely little jingle “Always ... Read more »
Mama’s Little Pirate
Somebody discovers pirate treasure, so the gang wants to go out looking for some. But Mama won’t let Spanky go. He splits in two and his devilish side says he should sneak out, which he does. They find a cave and tie a long string to Buckwheat so they can find their way back. Naturally, she follows them. They find a gigantic treasure chest and fill their pockets with gold until they can ... Read more »
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I’d been reading The Palin Diaries, 1969-79, what I hope is just the first volume of Michael Palin’s 40 years of daily writing, so I’d learned a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff about this movie and Life of Brian. I wanted to see if it was still as funny as the first time through. It was. It was made on a tiny budget, before Monty Python made it really, really big ... Read more »
Monte Walsh
This one started out on a bright note: Mama Cass (she reportedly didn’t like that name, but that’s how she is credited) singing the movie’s theme song. She’s the only one of my generation’s died-too-young bunch who didn’t succumb to drugs. It’s a false urban legend that she choked on a peanut butter or ham sandwich. She died of a heart attack, that ironically may have been brought on by ... Read more »
Monsters, Inc.
The fourth Pixar movie is one of the best. It’s a wonderful concept. There really are monsters in children’s closets, and they really do try to scare kids. Why? Energy. They store the energy from the screams to power Monstropolis. The catch is, the monsters are terrified of human children. If one were to escape through the space warps they create behind literally millions of closet doors ... Read more »
Snatch
Here’s a little test for you, to see if you might like this movie. Boris the Blade is said to be unkillable, and he has escaped from some pretty awful things still standing. But he encounters three of the most comically bungling crooks in London, and one, Bullet Tooth Tony, who is not funny at all. They are in a narrow hallway, with the three clowns cowering on their bellies. Tony shoots ... Read more »
Silkwood
There’s absolutely no way I can be unbiased about this movie. It deals with the gradual awakening of a young woman, Karen Silkwood, to the sloppy and downright dangerous practices at the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing facility in Oklahoma, her fight against the company, and her eventual murder by agents of Kerr-McGee. That’s right, I said murder. Traveling alone with a file of papers that ... Read more »
Dogma
For some reason I have never seen Clerks, the well-reviewed comedy starring the characters of Jay and Silent Bob. The director, Kevin Smith, has a cult following in several media, and this is a film he made not long afterwards. It is a satire on religion. All religion, I suppose, but the Catholic church comes in for most of the jokes. George Carlin is a cardinal ... Read more »