Movie Reviews
The Live Ghost
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. A captain hires them to Shanghai sailors. They end up being the last ones Shanghaied, and have to avoid the crew’s vengeance. They think they have killed the drunken first mate, who falls into a vat of white paint and comes back to haunt them. Not one of their very best.
Them Thar Hills
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Ollie has gout. Well, serves you right, you bonehead, for eating all that rich food! says Dr. Billie Gilbert. He advises a rest cure in the mountains, drinking plenty of water. What they don’t know as they pull up in their ‘30s RV (a box like a large packing crate on wheels) is that a bunch of moonshiners have dumped their hooch in the well. They get jolly ... Read more »
Towed in a Hole
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. They run a business selling fresh fish. They decide to buy a boat and catch their own fish. It has a few leaks, so naturally they fill it with water, and naturally Ollie gets soaked in every way it is possible to get soaked. Then they can’t get it moving, so they put up the sail …and car, trailer, and boat are demolished.
Tit For Tat
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. The title could sum up some of the very best bits L&H ever did. You know how it goes. Somebody does something nasty to somebody else: Dumps a bucket of water or paint over his head, pours molasses over him, makes him sit down on a crate of eggs, stuffs something awful down his pants. The offended guy retaliates. Then comically increasing retaliation. All ... Read more »
Thicker Than Water
Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. The henpecked husband was a frequent theme. And why not? Big as Ollie was, he had no real violence in him. For all his bluster he could be bossed around by anyone in the world except poor clueless Stanley, so it makes perfect sense that his wife, about a third his size, terrifies him. Here he has lost the money that should have gone ... Read more »
Mandela and de Klerk
I am writing this one day after the death of Nelson Mandela, and the whole world is in mourning. Every living U.S. president (except George H.W., whose health is not so good) is going to the funeral, and probably most of the other leaders of the world. Flags are flying at half mast, something I can’t recall seeing for any other non-American. Senators and Congresspersons who voted against ... Read more »
Mansfield Park
If Jane Austen were alive, she’d be rolling in dough. The IMDb says Sense and Sensibility has been filmed 4 times, Persuasion and Emma 3 times each (not counting Clueless and other knockoffs), and Pride and Prejudice no less than 10 times. Of course, part ... Read more »
Luther
I couldn’t help thinking of this as the Lutheran The Passion of the Christ. Lee and I were both raised Lutheran, though she was in that wild-eyed sect known as the Missouri Synod … and what they were doing in Oregon I’ll never know. If I were Garrison Keillor, and if I thought this movie was worth the time and effort, I could make a lot of gently funny ... Read more »
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 »
Manhunter
Terrific filming of the extremely weird Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. A very good portrait of Hannibal Lector by Brian Cox, considering how little screen time he has.