Movie Reviews
Carandirú
Prisons are different south of the Rio Grande. I’m not saying those in the US are a lot of fun, but I suspect most prisoners in Attica or Leavenworth would elect to spend ten years there rather than do two or three in a Mexican or Brazilian slammer. Carandiru in Sao Paolo was a particularly bad one, and this is its story. Basically, the prisoners ran it, the only function of the guards ... Read more »
Capturing the Friedmans
As good a documentary as I’ve ever seen on the elusive nature of “truth,” and how unlikely it often is for things to work out as neatly as they usually do in books and on television. A high school teacher and his son are accused of child molestation. Everybody lies, there is a Crucible sort of witch hunt, and at the end you don’t know where you stand. ... Read more »
Captains Courageous
I’ve never read the book by Kipling, but the Wiki summary doesn’t even mention the character of Manuel Fidello, for which Spencer Tracy won an Oscar. I have to assume Hollywood made him up. Which really shortchanged Mickey Rooney, who has almost nothing to do as the son of the captain of the Grand Banks fishing boat, who in the book befriended the stuck-up little rich kid (Freddie ... Read more »
Captain Blood
One of the all-time great swashbucklers. Errol Flynn got lucky when landing this part after several more famous actors had to turn it down. It made him a big star, and it’s east to see why. He is absolutely magnetic, and so is his co-star Olivia de Havilland. There is a long action scene with pirates attacking a town which will remind everyone who has been to Disneyland of the ... Read more »
Capote
By now the events surrounding the massacre of the Clutter family in Kansas have passed into legend, into the cultural filing cabinet along with Jack the Ripper and other horrors we know entirely too much about. This event would have been long forgotten except for Truman Capote’s book and the later movie In Cold Blood. I’ve never read it, but I saw the ... Read more »
The Canterville Ghost
Here’s a short story by Oscar Wilde that has been filmed no less than 11 times and, from what I can see about the versions that have a plot summary, never very close to the original story. It seems that all the producers wanted was the idea of a ghost in a castle, then worked endless variations on it. Oh, well. This is the first version, and it’s very good. Charles Laughton is the ghost. ... Read more »
Candide
So far as I know, Leonard Bernstein only had one flop, and this is it. In 1956 it ran for 73 shows, to critical disdain. But the cast album was a hit, and ever since people have been tinkering with it. What was wrong the first time? Some say it was a heavy-handed book by Lillian Hellman. Some say the story wasn’t right for the time, like Bob Fosse’s Chicago, which didn’t ... Read more »
Camp
A pale imitator of Fame, some of it astonishingly amateurish. Some of the worst acting and writing I’ve ever seen.
Camille
This one went direct to DVD. It got off to an extremely rocky start for me, as this white trash couple got married. He’s so ambivalent that he can only choke out a “Yes” at the altar. She’s so oblivious, so blindly in love, that she can’t see this as a bad sign. He spends the first few hours of their honeymoon (on a motorcycle with a sidecar) bitching at her because she won’t shut up, even ... Read more »
The Cameraman
This was the first film Buster Keaton made under contract to MGM, which means it was the first where he didn’t have complete creative control. Luckily, the iron fist of the biggest studio in Hollywood didn’t hammer him too hard on this one. That was to come later, when MGM’s idiotic idea of what audiences wanted to see clashed mightily with Buster’s comedic genius. I think it’s noteworthy ... Read more »