Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Now that Neil deGrasse Tyson has made a sequel to this, we thought it might be fun to take a look at the original series before we watched the new one. It would be a real treat for me, too, since I never saw the first one. When you stop to think of just how much we have learned about the universe in the twenty-four years since Carl Sagan first took us on a tour of the cosmos as we knew it ... Read more »
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
Neil deGrasse Tyson has taken it on himself to update the classic Cosmos series on PBS that was done by his old friend, Carl Sagan. It’s a daunting task, but I think he’s up to it.
First, and to no one’s surprise, the visuals are way, way, way better than in the original. That’s no aspersion on the good folks who did the original; they used the best ... Read more »
Countdown
What a total disaster. It was Robert Altman’s third feature film, with That Cold Day in the Park still to come before his breakout hit with M*A*S*H. It was adapted from a novel by Hank Searles, who specialized in aviation stories. The science is garbage. James Caan is going to be the first man on the Moon, and he’s going there in a ... Read more »
The Counterfeiters
Best Foreign Language Film, 2008. Another based-on-fact WWII movie. Seems like we’ve been seeing a lot of them lately. This one takes place in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where a band of Jews with certain skills have been assembled to forge documents and currency for the SS. They are “pampered,” by camp standards, with sufficient food, comfy beds with sheets, and even a ping-pong ... Read more »
County Hospital
Plot? We don’t need no steenkin’ plot! A two-reeler doesn’t really need much of a plot, and this one demonstrates that you don’t need one at all. Just a situation: Ollie is in the hospital with his leg in traction, in a cast. (As soon as you see that rope on his leg, you know he will soon be hanging from it.) Stan pays him a visit. Chaos ensues. This one features ... Read more »
The Court Jester
I am a big fan of Danny Kaye, and I think this is his best movie … with The Inspector General running a close second. All the gags work wonderfully well, the plot gets delightfully complicated, the Technicolor photography is dazzling, and the supporting cast are uniformly great. Mildred Natwick in particular does a great straight-faced comic turn, and Glynis ... Read more »
Cover Girl
Gene Kelly runs a small nightclub, his girlfriend (Rita Hayworth) works in the chorus. A wealthy man who was once in love with her mother gives her a chance to make it in the Big Time. Kelly, not wanting to stand in her way—or at least that’s how he stupidly rationalizes it to himself—pretends he doesn’t love her anymore, so she leaves him and makes it big. She’s about to marry the ... Read more »
Cowboys and Aliens
I can just see the genius behind this walking into a producer’s office and saying three words: “Cowboys and aliens.” And the producer immediately signs a check for one hundred big ones and says, “Try to get Harrison Ford.” This is the biggest “concept” movie since Snakes on a Plane, another one that didn’t need a script to get sold. The title says it. It’s big, ... Read more »
Crack-Up
Here’s a movie that really should have an exclamation point after the title. It is firmly in the noir genre, though it deals with a level of society quite a bit higher than normally shown in noir. Pat O’Brien, who I associate with brash, wise-guy characters, always quick with a quip, plays a mild-mannered art critic. On his way to see his sick mother, the train he is on collides head-on ... Read more »
The Cradle Will Rock
From 1934 to 1937 the Federal Theater Project was part of the WPA, intended to put creative people back to work. This is the true story of how commie-hunters shut it down, and of one of the last performances. Characters are people like Orson Welles, John Houseman, William R. Hearst, Nelson Rockefeller, and Diego Rivera. The cast is a director’s dream: Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Joan ... Read more »