Cop Rock

I think the problem was that the world was just not ready for Cop Rock in 1990. A gritty police drama, produced by Steven Bochco, where the cops and politicians and judges and jurors and crack dealers suddenly burst into song? The reviews were terrible. The audience never happened. It is on some lists of the worst TV series of all time. I feel pretty strongly ... Read more »

Cops and Robbers

Donald Westlake may just be my favorite writer. At least he’s up in the top five. He’s prolific, versatile, and I can always rely on him to entertain me. He writes mostly comic novels under his own name, many of them featuring a hard-luck burglar named John Dortmunder and his motley gang. When I say comic novels, don’t be put off. These are exquisite little gems, with plots that work like ... Read more »

Copycat

An otherwise ordinary super-smart serial killer movie that is elevated considerably by the performances of two of my favorite actresses: Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter. Weaver is a psychologist who studies serial killers and is almost killed herself by a creepy Harry Connick, Jr. at the beginning of the film. The attack traumatizes her so badly that she hasn’t set foot outside of her ... Read more »

Copying Beethoven

Did you know that in the final, hectic week before the premier of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, possibly the greatest single piece of music ever composed, while the Maestro was still revising it, his copyist got sick and called in a young woman music student to help out? Or that she not only helped him, but actually made suggestions and Read more »

Coraline

I really ought to start reading Neil Gaiman, I guess. Everybody seems to like him, he has legions of fans. Maybe I’ve been put off by his reputation as the king of the graphic novels, a genre I am totally uninterested in. This stop-action animation is based on a juvenile novel by him, and it’s quite good.

Coraline is not a sweet little thing. She’s grumpy, whiney, and a bit of a ... Read more »

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Roger Corman is a force of nature. In a career spanning almost sixty years as producer and director, he has somehow endured while many more respected Hollywood figures have crashed and burned. He has done it, of course, by providing the drive-in and third-rate-theater-going public the schlock they have always craved. Hell, I saw most of his output from the fifties and early sixties, many ... Read more »

The Coroner

We are big fans of British serial TV drama. I can never quite put my finger on the differences with American shows, but it seems they are somehow warmer, cozier. I don’t mean just the Miss Marple-type shows, but even shows like this one, which deals much more in the real world than the fussy English tea tales.

This is what I’d call an average example. Jane Kennedy is the coroner in ... Read more »

The Corporation

This documentary gets off to a good start, and ends well, but the middle is a muddle. This is partly because it’s too long. 2 1/2 hours is too much for a documentary. The other part is that it strays from its thesis and wanders around talking about corporate atrocities that are not new to me or to anybody who is informed.

The main thrust, and what they should have stuck to, is the ... Read more »

Corpse Bride

I wasn’t a big fan of Tim Burton’s previous animation, The Nightmare Before Christmas. The production was terrific, but I thought the story was weak and the music was not memorable. In fact, Burton’s movies are generally big hits or big flops with me. Hated Mars Attacks! and Beetlejuice, didn’t like Read more »

The Cosmic Monster

Also known as Cosmic Monsters, The Crawling Terror, and The Crawling Horror. Wow! That’s a lot of titles for a quite small film only 75 minutes long. And it’s actually sort of appropriate, since in many ways this crazy thing looks like it was cobbled together from several movies, like Frankenstein’s monster. In parts, it actually has ... Read more »