Movie Reviews
In the Good Old Summertime
Hollywood’s second take on the play Parfumerie by Miklós László, the first being The Shop Around the Corner. This time it’s a musical set in Chicago. (Oddly enough, it takes place almost entirely in the good old winter time.) It’s not bad, but it can’t really compete with the original. However, it has the ... Read more »
Neighbors
The IMDb (and I wonder how I ever survived without it) tells me that the set for this Romeo and Juliet in the Irish slums was made precisely to Keaton’s dimensions, with hand and footholds places perfectly for him to do his trademark scrambling like a human fly. There are several jokes that today we would probably consider racist, involving Buster inadvertently ending up in blackface (from ... Read more »
The Balloonatic
A fairly minor two-reeler in the Buster Keaton canon. Which is to say, there are a lot of great sight gags, but not much in the way of characterization.
In the Cut
Directed by Jane Campion, who won a screenplay Oscar for The Piano in 1993, which was a good movie. This, however, is basically a stupid potboiler that makes no sense.
Seven Chances
The IMDb says this was Buster Keaton’s least favorite of his feature movies. I suspect it was because it was based on a play that his producer, Joseph M. Schenck, had bought, and Buster wasn’t impressed. The idea was that he had to get married, to somebody, anybody, by 7 that evening to inherit 7 million dollars. This probably made for an okay farce on the stage, ... Read more »
In My Country
Shortly after Nelson Mandela got out of jail he and the government set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to do an extraordinary thing: They allowed many of the criminals of the previous regime to get off scot-free if they admitted what they had done, apologized to the victims and survivors, and could show they were “only following orders.” There is a great documentary to made ... Read more »
In Her Shoes
I liked this movie almost in spite of myself. The first half hour is a bit hard to take, as two sisters who share nothing but parents and the same shoe size clash repeatedly. Cameron Diaz is beautiful, lazy, a drunk, a thief, a liar, an illiterate, a slob, and keeps stealing her sister’s shoes. What’s not to like? Toni Collette is a pretty Aussie (though you’d never guess ... Read more »
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari
Unfortunately, we got a wretched copy of this from the library … and it still knocks your socks off, visually. I can’t think of any movie that shows a vision of insanity more imaginative than this. Everything is skewed, topsy-turvy. Walls and houses loom, streets meander crazily, rooms are made of random trapezoids. The story is pretty silly, even with the framing device that the ... Read more »
In Good Company
You know this is going to be fairly standard stuff from the start, but I like Dennis Quaid and love Scarlett Johannson, so we took a look. And for the first two acts it was damn good, transcending the material because of smart writing and top-notch acting. A loathsome young yuppie played very well by Topher Grace (Topher?) is promoted way beyond his capabilities over a man twice his age. ... Read more »
K-19: The Widowmaker
This one was a bit of a mystery to me. It is a big movie, budget $100,000,000. (That still qualifies as big, doesn’t it? And this was 2002.) It has two big stars, Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson. And I couldn’t recall even hearing about it. I probably did, but I’m not recalling it. And it flopped, big-time, made ... Read more »