Call Northside 777

Before there was The Wrong Man, there was this movie. Both are in a semi-documentary style, both concern men wrongly convicted of murder, both were based on true stories. In this one, filmed on location in Chicago, Jimmy Stewart is a reporter who is reluctantly put on the story when the convict’s mother, a charwoman, saves up $5000—a huge sum back then—over ... Read more »

California Split

In 1970 Robert Altman came barreling out of nowhere with M*A*S*H, on my personal Top 25 Best Films Ever List. Well … not exactly. He had actually served a 20-year apprenticeship in series television (everything from “Peter Gunn” and “Maverick” and “Bonanza” to “The Gale Storm Show” and “The ... Read more »

Calendar Girls

A movie in the pattern of The Full Monty, and not all I had hoped it would be. Good fun, but it’s become a bit of a formula by now. And according to things I read, it was considerably altered from the real story to make it … well, more formula.

The Caine Mutiny

It is my firm belief that if a good movie is made from a good book, it’s best to see the movie first, then read the book. I saw the television series of Lonesome Dove first, then read the book. That was perfect, as I absolutely loved the series, and then reading the book only enriched the experience by adding the elements that only a book can convey. Conversely, ... Read more »

Caché

… means “hidden” in French. This just missed by a hair qualifying for the coveted Gerry Award, which we give out, when we are so moved, to the slowest, most obtuse and deliberately confusing movies of all time. This award never goes to Grade-Z movies, flicks that aspire to nothing. These special movies are made by internationally acclaimed directors, and more often than ... Read more »

The Cabin in the Woods

This one has been sitting on my TO REVIEW list for two months now, as I ponder how I can communicate how much I hated, hated, hated this movie. I guess I’d better start with a brief plot summary.

Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are with dozens of other people in some sort of super-secret, super high-tech mission control facility spying on this group ... Read more »

Cabin in the Sky

This has to be the best of the all-black movie musicals … not that there were a lot of them, but still. It has just about every black actor on the MGM lot, and plenty of other guests such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Great singing by Ethel Waters and Lena Horne, in her first screen appearance. It was also the first movie directed by the great Vincente Minnelli. It features some ... Read more »

Cabaret

As we all know, Hollywood is legendary for buying a property—most often a book—and then completely re-writing it, losing just about everything that was good about it in the first place. This doesn’t happed so often with Broadway musicals; usually Hollywood limits its meddling to casting non-singers (Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood) and letting Marni Nixon repair the damage in the dubbing ... Read more »

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Aided by his foreign allies, Lee triumphs at Gettysburg and soon sweeps into Washington. Lincoln flees, disguised as a Negro, but is soon captured. (DW Griffith makes a movie about it, shows the cowardly Lincoln singing spirituals to prove he’s really a darkie. “What kind of white man are you, suh?”) Later, on film in 1905, exiled in Canada, Abe bitterly regrets he ... Read more »