Movie Reviews
Miss Potter
A highly fictionalized account of the life of Beatrix Potter, whose books I never read. For a movie starring Renee Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, and Emily Watson—big stars, all of them—it seems to have done very little business. It’s really not what I had hoped for. They might have mentioned that Potter was a recognized expert on fungi, and while they added a postscript that she donated most ... Read more »
The Ox-Bow Incident
Hollywood made so many crappy westerns—Saturday matinee serials, “singing cowboys” in ridiculous outfits, endless B and C movies—that I sometimes forget that some of the best movies ever made were in a western setting. I can easily think of a dozen. This, which I had somehow never seen, can stand with any of them. Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan ride into a dusty little shithole in Nevada and ... Read more »
Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day
This is based on a novel written in 1939, but as I watched it I felt it easily could have been a stage play. There are a limited number of scene changes, and it is dialogue-driven. Further, I thought it could make a real nice musical … and in fact, in the DVD extras, I learned that Universal optioned it many years ago, intending it to be a musical starring Billie “Glenda the Good ... Read more »
Owning Mahoney
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver. Excellent work by both, in a based-on-fact story of a compulsive gambler who managed to steal an amazing amount of money from the bank where he worked for an amazingly long time.
Mirage
Mirage (1965) About a year before this Charade was a huge hit. It was smart and funny and suspenseful, and the writer wanted to do another one like it. So he hit upon the tired old amnesia schtick, and came up with this. It’s well-made, it looks great with noirish B&W photography and disorienting editing, but the plot doesn’t really hold water. Pop ... Read more »
Overnight
See, what happened was, this bartender named Troy Duffy wrote a screenplay called The Boondock Saints and got it to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films. Harv loved it. Next thing you know, Troy’s got a $300,000 salary to direct the film, and a $15,000,000 budget, and also a contract for his band. Whoopee! Suddenly Troy is the Hollywood golden boy. He figures he’s ... Read more »
Over the Hedge
How we got this DVD is more interesting than the movie itself. Bruce Willis was finally getting his star on Hollywood Boulevard on October 16th, at 11:30 in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Now, when Vanna White gets a star they close off one lane of the street for a few hours and the one or two hundred people showing up for the ceremony squeeze in there. When Bruce gets his, they ... Read more »
Outsourced
Here is a bright and funny little romantic feel-good comedy set mostly in India, maybe an antidote to the horrific early scenes in Slumdog Millionaire. A guy from Seattle is sent to India to train the people who are taking over the phone-ordering jobs of a company that is interested in only the bottom line. He tries to make them work like Americans, but has a lot ... Read more »
Out of Time
Denzel Washington. Goes along pretty well until the last reel, which is always the toughest. Not totally stupid, but no more than an entertaining time-waster.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
I decided to see this one again after yet another news story about the much-loathed “Octomom.” You know, Nadya Suleman, the crazy lady who recently bore the only surviving (at this writing, and it looks like they will all make it) set of octuplets ever delivered. And everybody thought that was just amazing … for about 24 hours. Then the afterbirths hit the fan. It came out that she was ... Read more »