Movie Reviews
Chopin: Desire for Love
I have no idea if Mozart was a supremely talented but obnoxious fellow as portrayed so well by Tom Hulce in Amadeus … but who cares? The story was wonderful, dense, clever, and moving. It worked, dramatically.
I don’t know if Chopin was a fiery, moody, stud-muffin, as he is portrayed in this awful biopic, either, but none of it worked. All the ... Read more »
Chloe
Julianne Moore is a gynecologist who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her. She hatches a rather bizarre plan to hire a high-class prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to come on to him, see if he will take the bait. The pro meets with him three times, the last one in a hotel room … or does he? I don’t want to give away too much, but it will surely occur to everyone that the girl ... Read more »
Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed
Remember Shirley Chisholm? She died this year, on New Years Day 2005, aged 81. In 1972 she was a two-term congresswoman from Brooklyn, the first black woman to sit in the House. So she’s black, and she’s a woman. Strike one, strike two. She’s rather homely, bucktoothed, with a wart on her chin. She is the daughter of West Indian parents. You want more? She has a speech impediment. So what ... Read more »
China Seas
A tramp passenger/freighter bound for Singapore, Captain Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Wallace Beery, Malay pirates, a typhoon complete with tilting sets, a runaway piano in the lounge and a runaway steamroller on deck, and enough water pouring over everything that Gable was in serious danger of being smashed by it all … what more could you ask? Not much, really. It’s a ... Read more »
Children of Paradise
The back story on this movie is almost as interesting as the movie itself. Briefly, it was made during the Nazi occupation of France, against daunting odds. If you want to know more, Robert Ebert provides a nice summary of the circumstances. Because the Nazis wouldn’t allow any films longer than 90 minutes the director, Marcel Carné, just cut it into two pieces. It is not an Read more »
Death at a Funeral
Frank Oz (the voice of Miss Piggy) in his other life as a director, has given us Little Shop of Horrors and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, two of my all-time favorites, and HouseSitter, another good one, though not quite on a par with the first two. This movie is more on that scale. We laughed a lot. No point ... Read more »
Children of Men
This was a fairly frustrating experience. It’s a crackerjack thriller based on a pretty stupid idea. Suddenly, globally, and without explanation, women stopped being capable of fertilization in the year 2008. Twenty years later, all is chaos, with only the UK having a semblance of civilization. (Why the UK? Why, because that’s where the author of the book, PD James, lives, I ... Read more »
Chickens Come Home
Ollie is the owner of a successful business selling fertilizer, and he’s also running for mayor. But an old girlfriend shows up with an incriminating picture she wants to sell him. Stan is recruited to try to keep her away from a dinner party Ollie is throwing with some influential potential donors. I’ve always felt that when the boys are prosperous the comedy never works quite as well as ... Read more »
Deadfall
I’ve been trying to recall why I ordered this movie, what attracted me to it, and other than the fact that Michael Caine is in it, I just can’t remember. And now I regret it. He and the director, Bryan Forbes, had worked together two years before in The Wrong Box, a neglected gem. Forbes did some quite good movies in the ‘60s, then his career sort of petered out. ... Read more »
Chicago
One of my favorite musical movies of all time, made from one of my favorite stage musicals. You can’t help wondering what Bob Fosse would have done with it if he had lived, but the present director preserved the Fosse flavor, and though I hated to lose the onstage orchestra and stage format, the device of having the musical numbers occur in Roxie’s imagination was ingenious.