Monte Walsh

This one started out on a bright note: Mama Cass (she reportedly didn’t like that name, but that’s how she is credited) singing the movie’s theme song. She’s the only one of my generation’s died-too-young bunch who didn’t succumb to drugs. It’s a false urban legend that she choked on a peanut butter or ham sandwich. She died of a heart attack, that ironically may have been brought on by ... Read more »

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I’d been reading The Palin Diaries, 1969-79, what I hope is just the first volume of Michael Palin’s 40 years of daily writing, so I’d learned a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff about this movie and Life of Brian. I wanted to see if it was still as funny as the first time through. It was. It was made on a tiny budget, before Monty Python made it really, really big ... Read more »

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

I’ve seen this several times, the first time at what used to be Graumann’s Chinese Theater, on Hollywood Boulevard, most recently to take the taste of blood out of my mouth after watching The Passion of the Christ, for my sins. It’s one of the best comedies ever made. Now I can never see Christ nailed on the cross without that lovely little jingle “Always ... Read more »

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

I can’t think of a comedy movie that has this many superlatives. Best sacrilegious musical number (“Every Sperm is Sacred”). Best total gross-out scene (Mr. Creosote eats one more “wafer-thin mint” and explodes). Best gory scene (live organ donations). There are half a dozen other masterpieces here. Eric Idle’s “Galaxy Song.” The Grim Reaper. The British officer class in the Zulu War, ... Read more »

The Monuments Men

Most of the reviews pointed out how old-fashioned this one is, and I can’t disagree. It has no impossible stunts or bloodbaths, which is cool, because the unit this story is based on operated mostly within our lines. Their mission was to rescue art works that had been looted and hidden away by the Nazis. And as they retreated, they often destroyed it all, as they had already destroyed the ... Read more »

Moon

Several people have written to me, recommending this modest, independent movie, saying it was good hard SF. And it was, in some ways. However …

Plot: (CONTAINS SPOILERS) A man has a three-year contract to run a moon base, all alone. Already I’m frowning … but never mind. He’s going a little bonkers. (Well, duuuh.) He supervises four big robot harvesters that are collecting Helium-3 ... Read more »

Moonlight

Right off the bat I will tell you that I do not think this is the best picture of 2016. I have seen only five of the nine nominees, have not seen the pre-Oscar favorite, La La Land, but of those I have seen I think Hacksaw Ridge and Arrival are both better ... Read more »

Moonlight Mile

Excellent. Wonderful cast, led by Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon. A young man’s fiancée is murdered, and he moves in with her parents, and they all deal with their grief in different ways.

Moonrise Kingdom

Every once in a while a movie comes along that I find it difficult to describe. Sometimes it is even hard to explain why I liked it. I live for those moments. How many cookie-cutter CGI extravaganzas like The Avengers, The Hobbit, and The Dark Knight Rises do you think we get in a typical year? Thirty? Forty? And how many really unusual ... Read more »

The More the Merrier

There was no actress better in the screwball comedies of the late 1930s and early ‘40s than Jean Arthur. You want proof? How about The Talk of the Town, The Devil in Miss Jones, and that wonderful Frank Capra trio, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Joel ... Read more »