Movie Crazy

Harold Lloyd movies often contain plots where mistaken identity is a key. Here he is a star-struck rube who has unknowingly submitted a handsome hunk’s picture to a studio as his own. He is asked to come to California for a screen test, where he soon wreaks havoc on every scene he is in. We’re getting near the end of Lloyd’s career with this film, which was not a success. It’s not that he ... Read more »

Mr. 3000

I had few expectations about this one. I knew it was about a ballplayer who got 3000 hits, then quit baseball in the middle of a pennant race because he was such a self-centered asshole. Nine years later it turns out 3 of those hits were recorded twice, so he’s only got 2997. He wants to be in the Hall of Fame but sportswriters hate him. Now he has to get back in shape and try for those ... Read more »

Mr. and Mrs. Murder

The best way to think of this is as Nick and Nora Charles for the 21st century. But where Nick was a boozing ex-P.I. and Nora was a wealthy socialite, Charlie and Nicola Buchanan are sole proprietors of a Melbourne toxic cleaning service, ToxiClean. Where N&N are full of sophisticated banter, C&N are more than a bit goofy. In a very endearing way.

While I assume they would ... Read more »

Mr. Baseball

I thought a better title might have been Mr. Besuboru … but then most people wouldn’t know what it meant. That’s the way Japanese speakers pronounce baseball. No kidding. Tom Selleck is a ballplayer whose best years are behind him (haven’t we seen this story before?). He gets traded to a team in Japan, where large white guys can sometimes beat the tar out of ... Read more »

Mr. Bean’s Holiday

Rowan Atkinson’s “Mr. Bean” series is one of the most brilliant things ever to come out of British television, right up there with “Fawlty Towers” and Atkinson’s other masterpiece, the “Blackadder” series. So why was the first movie, Bean, absolutely dreadful, to the point that I couldn’t bear to watch beyond the halfway point? What happened?
Mr. Bean is … ... Read more »

Mr. Blabbermouth!

The DVD of Mrs. Miniver (one of the best movies about World War II) contains three contemporary shorts from MGM. They cover different aspects of the morale-building efforts at home while our boys in uniform fought the Japs and Krauts. I use those terms deliberately, as they (and worse) were routinely used to describe our enemies.

In this one a portly ... Read more »

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Based on a popular novel of a few years before. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy and their two young daughters are feeling the pinch in their two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and decide to buy a house in Connecticut. Melvyn Douglas as their friend and lawyer tries to dissuade them from being in too much of a hurry, but they are too gaga with excitement to be very cautious. So they end up with a ... Read more »

Mr. Brooks

There’s this serial killer (Kevin Costner), see, who is also a rich, successful businessman, loving husband, and father … and already my bullshit alarm is going off. He has an imaginary playmate (William Hurt) whose origin is never explained, but who keeps goading Mr. Niceguy to kill innocent people. Only Mr. Brooks fucks up and a guy across the street takes pictures of his latest kill. ... Read more »

Mr. Holmes

Somebody, somewhere, must be keeping an account of just how many times in books and movies there have been outside-the-canon stories of old Sherlock. There have several of them lately, one series starring Robert Downey, Jr. (which I hated) and another on TV with Benedict Slumbercrutch (or whatever his name is) and Martin Freeman, which I love, except for the recent one-off. Back in 1985 ... Read more »

Mr. Lucky

This movie I hadn’t seen became the basis for a television show I never saw. The only reason the TV show was memorable is because Henry Mancini wrote a great musical theme for it. And the TV show was only broadly based on the movie. In fact, just about all Blake Edwards, the creator of the show, used was the title of the movie and the fact that he ran an off-shore gambling boat. And then, ... Read more »