The Trial of the Chicago 7

It was a long, long time ago now. Many of my readers were not even born when this shitshow went down in Chicago, after the police riot encouraged by Mayor Daley. Eight of the rather amorphous group of “leaders” of the protests were picked out either from their notoriety or seemingly just at random, and charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot. They were Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, ... Read more »

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

If there was a contest to determine the wittiest man in the English language, I think Oscar Wilde would at least have his name on the final ballot. The story of his life was a terrible tragedy, as forces were gathered against him that his wit could not protect him from. He realized this far too late, and it shattered him.

Peter Finch plays Wilde here, and does okay. Most of the ... Read more »

The Trip

Hey, man, groove on this weird groovy shit, man. It’s fuckin’ groovy! Did we really say “groovy” as often as the people in this movie do? Yes, I’m afraid we did. Forgive us, young folks.

This movie really sucks. Sorry, but there it is. Hollywood—even the bottom of the barrel Hollywood, in the form of Roger Corman—never really understood the ’60s ... Read more »

The Trip to Boutiful

Geraldine Page was nominated for an Oscar 8 times, and won with this, her last shot, and died shortly afterwards. The script was adapted by Horton Foote, from his own play. You may know him as one of the finest writers in Hollywood, who got his start on the stage and on TV. He won Oscars for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies. So I hoped to like this a lot. And I did like it … ... Read more »

The Triplets of Belleville

We have just seen the best movie we’ve seen all year. It’s The Triplets of Belleville, and it may be the best animated movie ever. I wait a few years to put movies on my “best of all time” list, but this one just crashed into my head. The first five minutes staggered me, left me with my jaw on the fucking floor, and it just got better from there. It is impossible to ... Read more »

Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

I’ve never read the book (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and probably never will. Someone in the movie describes it as “A postmodernist novel from before the time there was any modern to be post about.” It was written and published between 1759 and 1769, in nine volumes, and it has been generally agreed that it is ... Read more »

Tron

I was dubious when I popped the DVD into the Blu-ray, wondering what this would look like almost forty years later. I recall that I, like most people, was pretty impressed by the computer graphics. Tron was the first film to use much CGI, though only about twenty minutes of it. CGI was ridiculously slow and expensive, considering that the “super-computer” they ... Read more »

Tron: Legacy

These two films provide an excellent illustration of just how far CGI has come in twenty-eight years. Tron had only a few minutes of actual CGI. Tron 2 is wall-to-wall CGI. I think there are very few scenes that don’t have at least a little image manipulation, and most of them are very elaborate creations that exist only in the ... Read more »

Tropfest New York 2012

We had never heard of Tropfest. It seems it is the world’s largest festival for short films. When I say short, I mean short. The maximum running time is seven minutes, credits included. It began small in Sydney in 1993 and gradually expanded, sort of like Sundance. Now it’s a pretty big deal, having had festivals in Abu Dhabi, London, Berlin, Toronto, Bangkok, ... Read more »

Tropic Thunder

This is far from a perfect comedy, but these days you take what you can get. Every time I thought it was going to totally lose it, they came up with something funny again and kept me watching. Some of the best stuff was right at the beginning—a good idea, to lead strongly and get me rooting for the picture. All three idiot actors in the “jungle war movie” scenario are introduced by ... Read more »