Movie Reviews
Titles starting with T
Trouble in Paradise
Nobody ever topped Ernst Lubitsch in sophisticated romantic comedy, and this is one of his best. Herbert Marshall is a high-class jewel thief and he has to choose between two women: His partner in crime, a pickpocket, and a rich owner of a perfume company. I’m a big fan of movies about non-violent rascals, and this one is a gem.
The Trouble With Harry
Hitchcock said on several occasions that this was his favorite of his films. I think he mentioned others at other times, but this one is clearly from the heart. A very black, very strange heart, but still. Audiences in 1955 weren’t ready for this sort of black humor, and the film was a financial bust. I just dearly love it, and have since the first time I saw it. In a forest near a tiny ... Read more »
Trouble With the Curve
Ol’ Clint has turned out to be a much better director than he is an actor, and he’s not a bad actor. Judging from his last two parts, he seems to relish playing crotchety old men who are not aging gracefully. But Gran Torino, which he directed, is a much better movie than this one, which he didn’t. This is from a first-time director, Robert Lorenz, who worked as ... Read more »
Troy
Not as bad as I had expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. I was forced to read The Iliad, which I think is highly overrated, in college, and this movie is sort of accurate, though it leaves out the gods. Achilles was a pain in the butt in the book, and he’s even more of a pain in the butt in the movie. So Brad Pitt was the perfect casting choice. Orlando ... Read more »
True Confessions
The Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947 is one of those things that, for one reason or another, will never be allowed to go dark. It’s like Jack the Ripper, or Lizzie Borden. I don’t doubt that in a hundred years there will still be fiction and non-fiction about these crimes, and several others. Lord, it was gruesome enough—Elizabeth Short was found cut in ... Read more »
True Crime
A pretty good thriller, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, that for some reason never found its audience. It’s a race with the clock, Clint being a reporter who is convinced that a man on death row is innocent. His nose for news is really all he has going for him, as he is a drunk, a womanizer, and a terribly neglectful father. The race gets pretty ridiculous at the end, literally ... Read more »
True Grit
This is so rare a thing that I can’t even recall another example. How often does someone remake a great film … and improve on it? I can think of some times where a bad film or an okay film has been improved the second time around, but never a great one. The Coen Brother have managed it. I loved the original True Grit movie. It contains one of the all-time classic ... Read more »
True Grit
When I first heard that the Coen Brothers were remaking this film, I was pretty sure it was a bad idea. They proved me wrong, completely and gloriously wrong. I’d be happy to be wrong like that a hundred times a year. So, was the original maybe not as good as I remembered it? I was curious to see it again.
No, I wasn’t wrong. This is still a great film, and a great performance by ... Read more »
True Romance
So Christopher Walken is a Sicilian gang boss, see. He has arrived at Dennis Hopper’s trailer with two of his goons with the intention of finding out where Hopper’s son is, so he can kill him. They have tuned Hopper up a bit, slapped him around, as a prelude to some serious torturing. It is clear that Hopper has no hope of coming out of this alive. So … Hopper starts in on this monologue ... Read more »
Trumbo
In the annals of things my country cannot be proud of, the Hollywood Blacklist certainly ranks far below the genocide of the natives, the horrors of slavery, and the internment of 100,000 Japanese during World War II. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a worthy time to remember.
I don’t think there was ever a more aptly named Congressional body than the House Un-American Activities ... Read more »