Movie Reviews
Maria Full of Grace
An extremely good movie about the drug trade, and its human cost. I’m not talking about the rich and bored who snort coke, or the poor and hopeless who smoke crack. It’s about the impossibly cruel people who run the trade, and the people who risk their lives to get the stuff to a hungry America. As long as we continue this asinine and no-win “War on Drugs,” people like Maria will pay the ... Read more »
Margot at the Wedding
Roger Ebert said this in his review: “The characters are into emotional laceration for fun. They are verbal, articulate, self-absorbed, selfish, egotistical, cold and fascinating.” Hit the nail on the head, Rog, except the fascinating part. He liked it; I didn’t. Spending 90 minutes with these people was quite an ordeal. Spending the whole ghastly weekend with ... Read more »
Margin Call
Oh, no, not another vampire movie! Yes, I’m afraid so, but there’s a big difference in this one. It’s not those stupid Northwest vamps from Twilight, or the silly Transylvanian breed in their funny capes. No, these are truly scary vampires. By day they roost in their glass towers above Wall Street, lords of all they survey, and by night they swoop down to suck ... Read more »
March of the Penguins
This French film is the most successful documentary ever, after Fahrenheit 9/11. I’m not quite sure why, but first, the things I like about it.
The life of the emperor penguin is one of almost unimaginable hardships. They live in the worst place in the world, and to reproduce they have to perform a complicated series of treks that, at first, defy ... Read more »
Oliver the Eighth
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Stan and Ollie both plan to marry a rich widow, not knowing the reason she wants to have Ollie in her house is that she has declared war on Olivers because it was an Oliver who broke her heart. She has killed seven Olivers, in cahoots with her mad butler who plays cards with an invisible deck. It’s a hoot, except for the cop-out ending that it was all a bad ... Read more »
Marathon Man
“Is it safe?” Without a doubt, this would make my list of Top Five thriller movies. Scene after scene, line after line, it set new standards for the intelligent thriller. (In spite of a couple off-the-wall scenes: Why did the doll’s eyes open before it blew up, and where the hell did that soccer ball come from?) From the very first sequence, of the old Jew and the old Nazi acting out their ... Read more »
Dirty Work
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Just as you know that if L&H get a job whitewashing a fence they are going to end up white from head to toe, you know that when they become chimney sweeps they will be black. Lots of good gags, culminating in a mad scientist who invents a rejuvenating formula that turns a duck into an egg and Ollie into a chimp.
The Hoose-Gow
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Here’s one made on the cheap. There’s a minimal prison set, and the rest takes place on a road gang. The extended bit: Ollie drives a pickax through the radiator of the visiting governor’s car. To plug the leak they fill it with rice. The rice boils out, and soon everyone in sight is playing tit for tat with handfuls of boiled rice, seldom hitting what they are ... Read more »
Going Bye-Bye!
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. The boys have testified against a violent, angry hoodlum and he is going to jail, but vows to get them, tear off their legs, and twist them around their heads. They decide to leave town, but somehow end up with the escaped hood packed in a trunk. They try to get him out, not knowing who he is, and almost manage to kill him. Naturally they end up sitting on a ... Read more »
Beau Hunks
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. The opening credits list 3,897 Arabs, 1,944 Riffians, and 4 Native Swede Guilders. It’s a take-off on Beau Geste, with Ollie going into the French Foreign Legion to forget a failed romance. (Turns out every man in the army is mooning over the same picture he is; it’s Jean Harlow.) At 37 minutes it’s neither a short nor a feature. ... Read more »