Movie Reviews
The Diamond Arm
Here is a highly-rated movie that is described by many as “the most beloved Russian comedy.” It is a comedy of errors involving a poor innocent schmuck who accidentally gets involved in a smuggling scheme, with diamonds concealed in a cast on his arm. As in a Donald Westlake book, comical things go wrong. But most of it didn’t work well with me. It was too much knockabout, and didn’t seem ... Read more »
Les Diaboliques
One more gap in my cinema knowledge filled in. There are still a few real classics out there I haven’t seen, but now there is one less.
Henri-Georges Clouzot was the French Hitchcock, though with less of a sense of humor and the absurd. In fact, Hitch wanted this script, and Clouzot beat him out by a matter of hours, or so the legend goes. Before this he made Read more »
The Company
I’m a little conflicted about this one. I love Robert Altman for his willingness to take risks … but sometimes it works better than others. The dance numbers are all well worth watching, some are really great. The story never really comes together; in fact, there is very little story at all, which makes it seem strange, because we know Malcolm McDowell and Neve Campbell are actors, ... Read more »
Coming Home
Sometimes you just wonder … why bother? People work to change things, and ten years later, twenty years later, a century later, not much is different. Civil War veterans were treated abominably. Things were so bad for WWI vets that they marched on Washington in 1932, camped in a Hooverville, and had their heads busted by Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, and later had their ... Read more »
The Devil’s Disciple
Turner Classic Movies lists this is a comedy, but don’t expect pratfalls or fart jokes. It’s based on a play by George Bernard Shaw, and the wit is definitely Shavian. Ironies abound as a minister (Burt Lancaster) and a ne’er-do-well (Kirk Douglas) match moral principles against cynical worldliness during the Revolutionary War. (Do the Brits call it the American Rebellion, as people in the ... Read more »
The Devil Wears Prada
I’ll admit it, this movie started out with 4 strikes against it, because it asks me to accept that the world of fashion really matters. It’s basically the old Cinderella story girls love so much, because it tells them that if they just put on some pretty clothes and have a fashion make-over on Oprah they’ll stop being the boring, ordinary women they actually are. Only ... Read more »
The Devil Came On Horseback
Brian Steidle isn’t your usual world-saving Peace Corp member, not the kind of guy you might expect to make a movie like this. He’s an ex-Marine, and got a job with the African National Congress to be an unarmed observer in the south of Sudan, trying to keep the peace. Later he gravitated north and west, toward Darfur, and the things he saw there changed him forever. I put off watching ... Read more »
College
This is not one of Buster Keaton’s best features … but then, he didn’t make any bad ones, so it’s well worth your time.
The Detective
Here’s a movie a bit ahead of its time. It doesn’t follow just one story, but episodes in the life of a cop who really tries to do the right thing among all the political pressures on him. He is, in the end, unable to, but he gives it his best shot. Sinatra is very good. And I think it was really groundbreaking in another respect. It shows the furtive world of the contemporary homosexual ... Read more »
Collateral
There is more character development in the first five minutes of Collateral that the whole putrid mess of AVP. It’s fast, it’s smart, it’s good to look at, the music rocks. I applaud Tom Cruise for taking the role of a very, very bad man, though an interesting one.
SPOILER WARNING
… though ... Read more »