Movie Reviews
The Lady in the Lake
Raymond Chandler only wrote seven novels. Six of them were made into films, some of them twice. (The only exception, Playback, was pretty bad.) If asked who played the best Philip Marlowe, most people would choose Bogart in The Big Sleep. He was very good, but my personal preference would be Robert Mitchum in Read more »
The Lady From Shanghai
One of the oddest movies I’ve ever seen, and now an acknowledged classic by Orson Welles. This is in spite the fact that much of what Rita Hayworth says is whispered so quietly I couldn’t hear it with the sound cranked up to eleven, and much of what Welles has to say is in an unintelligible “Irish” accent, and in spite of the plot, which is incomprehensible. Don’t take my word for it. This ... Read more »
The Lady Eve
We’re almost at the end of our Preston Sturges festival, only two more films to go. (I’m ignoring the unfortunate movies he made near the end of his career, and focusing only on the string of brilliant gems from 1940 to 1944.) This one is right up there with his best. Henry Fonda is a clueless rich guy, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn are a father and daughter con team. But she falls ... Read more »
Ladder 49
We had no expectations for this, and pretty much liked it. Predictable, I’ll grant you, and some say it exploited all the dead firemen from 9/11. I prefer to think it honored them. I know I’ve never felt quite the same about firefighters since that horrible day. Ladder 49 is organized as a man reviewing his life, from rookiehood to the day he is trapped in a huge ... Read more »
Lackawanna Blues
An HBO movie, based on an autobiographical one-man show play. There are at least a dozen high-powered black actors in this, plus Jimmy Smits, all with small parts, all obviously eager to get a chance at a cameo in this sweet little film. But it is dominated, as it must and should be, by S. Epatha Merkerson, from “Law & Order.” She plays a saintly but no-nonsense woman who runs a ... Read more »
La vie en rose
In ‘60s rock there were The Beatles, and there was everybody else. In 20th century male popular singers, there was Sinatra, and there was everybody else. But with female singers of the last century, we got very, very lucky. There was Garland, there was Holiday, there is Streisand, there is Franklin, and there was Piaf. I couldn’t really rank them, though I suppose Piaf would be my personal ... Read more »
La Dolce Vita
Recently restored and released on DVD. It had been quite a few years since I’d seen it, so we rented it … and pretty soon I realized that I had never seen it. I’ve seen just about all the “classics,” the great films, but there are gaps here and there. I hadn’t realized it was so long, almost 3 hours. It is gorgeous to look at. I think Fellini had a black and white heart. The shadows ... Read more »
La Ceremonie
A fascinating film from Claude Chabrol, sometimes called the French Alfred Hitchcock. A disturbed young woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) meets a flat-out crazy one (the wonderful Isabelle Huppert), with disastrous results. The build-up is very slow, and the pay-off shocking. Jacqueline Bisset is in it, and she’s very good. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and she’s aging well. Apparently she’s been ... Read more »
L4yer Cake
A stylish, sometimes funny flick about drug dealers and a deal gone wrong. But after a while we were both wishing for American subtitles. I’m usually pretty good with Brit accents, but I know a missed a lot of dialogue. By the end, I was far from sure just what was happening, and the final shot, literally, was not needed and felt like a cheat from back in the days of the Hays Office, when ... Read more »
L.A. Story
Steve Martin’s own wacky brand of magical realism, and a love note to the wonderful oddness of Los Angeles. It shifts quickly from outright farce to satire to an amazing sweetness without ever setting a foot wrong, which is quite a dance to do. When he’s on his game (and he hasn’t been, for too many years) Steve Martin is the best comic there is, and he wrote and stars in this one. I sure ... Read more »