Movie Reviews
The Darjeeling Limited
I know things aren’t going well when I begin mentally writing my review 30 minutes into the film, and leafing through my mind’s thesaurus seeking synonyms for pretentious, boring, and just plain bad. This is written and directed by Wes Anderson. I liked his The Royal Tenenbaums well enough, and thought Rushmore was very good. Then we ... Read more »
Dante’s Inferno
We think we have epic films today, with all the CGI and other special effects to flesh out sets that barely exist in real life. I am still sometimes surprised to see just how gigantic scenes could be in the old days, when there was nothing available but some double exposure to combine several scenes of the same extras into one shot. This film is famous for its ten-minute creation of Hell, ... Read more »
Danny Deckchair
Danny Deckchair (2003) I don’t know how you pronounce “Capra” in Australian, but that’s the word here. Some people can’t take Frank Capra’s corny populism and eternal optimism. To me, it’s a tough trick to turn, but if you can do it, I like it. I’m not saying I believe it; I just like to think for the length of a movie that the world might be that way, every once in a while. This story was ... Read more »
The Dancer Upstairs
The Dancer Upstairs (2002) Directed by John Malkovich, book and screenplay by Shakespeare. No, not Will. Nicolas Shakespeare.
The story is based on the Shining Path anarchist/communist/guerillas who terrorized Peru for many years, as depraved and murderous a group as anyone since Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Malkovich has a good directorial eye and he avoids a lot of ... Read more »
Damn Yankees
Directed by Stanley Donen and George Abbott. Starring Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston. Choreography by Bob Fosse. Do I really need to say more? Well, maybe just a little. This seems to be the only time Fosse and his wife of 27 years, Gwen Verdon, danced together on film, in the number “Who’s Got the Pain?” She was his muse and the first person to perform most of his signature moves, even after ... Read more »
The Dam Busters
I have a connection with this film, in that it was directed by Michael Anderson, the man who did his best to make a good film out of the remains of my script, Millennium. Michael directed the Best Picture Oscar-winning Around the World in 80 Days. He has some wonderfully wacky stories about Michael Todd, the certifiably insane producer. ... Read more »
The Da Vinci Code
One of the nice things about living in Los Angeles is that everything plays here. The most obscure art movie, the latest epic from East Timor … everything. We stumbled on this one at a little neighborhood theater in Los Feliz Village, bargain matinee $4.50, and thought, what the heck? Okay … it’s kind of long, and it’s mostly about people standing around ... Read more »
The Italian Job
Another re-make that works. How rare. I wouldn’t say it is as good as the original, things must be too complicated and too flashy these days, but there are two pretty good capers in it and I’m thankful for that.
Italian For Beginners
We loved this movie. It concerns a group of Danes who meet weekly to learn Italian, and it concerns itself with the relationships that develop among them. Highly entertaining.