Movie Reviews
Good Night Nurse
AMC was running a Buster Keaton series, so I decided to catch up on some shorts I hadn’t seen. This one is very early, only Buster’s twelfth screen appearance, and it’s not really a Keaton movie at all, it’s all Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s show. He was already a big star, and Buster wasn’t. It’s pure knockabout slapstick, just one pratfall after another with very little time to set up jokes, ... Read more »
Hostage
Robert Crais is one of the best writers around. I’ve read all his books, including the one this movie was based on, and they’re great.
Bruce Willis is one of my favorite action-movie stars. His everyman looks and his attitude are just believable, even though the stunts may not be.
This movie gets off to a great start. Even the opening credits are ... Read more »
Good Night and Good Luck
I’ll have to start out by admitting to a little inconsistency. Elsewhere in these reviews I have railed against movies that play fast and loose with the facts (Cinderella Man springs to mind). I also have a distaste for movies that unnecessarily hype up the action in what is essentially a cerebral story. Now here is a movie that is rigorous and thoughtful ... Read more »
Good Neighbor Sam
Apparently Jack Lemmon had no interest in doing this film, no respect for the script, and was amazed when it did very well at the box office. I think he wanted to be known for dramas like The Days of Wine and Roses, and quality comedy/dramas like The Apartment, and thought this sort of fluff was beneath him. Also the movies he made ... Read more »
Good Hair
This is a great little documentary about the hair of African-Americans. Mostly African-American women. I have to swallow hard to use that term, which I really don’t like, as what we are actually talking about is Negro hair. Not that I really care what any group people choose to call themselves, but this is a term—along with “Asian”—that ... Read more »
The Good German
This should have been a real crackerjack, and part of it is. Steven Soderbergh is a hell of a good director, and I understand the book this was based on was a good one. It attempts to look like it was actually made in 1945, and except for a very few camera moves that seem a bit slick, it is amazing. And no wonder, since they used all period equipment and techniques, such as incandescent ... Read more »
Gone Baby Gone
Dennis Lehane is much more than just a genre writer, he’s simply one of the best writers working today. There are no easy situations in a Lehane novel, and no easy answers. In Mystic River, the father of the murdered daughter kills the wrong man … which is tough enough, but then Lehane makes it clear that the guy can live with it. Whoa! ... Read more »
Hopscotch
Walter Matthau is a CIA agent who has just been pulled from the field and put in an office job. It’s a purely political and personal decision by Ned Beatty, his incompetent boss, who hates him. Walter decides he’s not going to stand for it, and starts writing his memoirs, mailing them in a chapter at a time, telling all the dirt he knows, where the bodies are buried. And the CIA tries to ... Read more »
Home of the Brave
You want to like this movie because everything it has to say is the truth … and yet all points are driven home with a hammer until you begin to wish some of these people would just shut up and get on with their lives. Irwin Winkler has been the producer of some of the best films ever made, including Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Read more »
Home Movie
This is from the IMDb, and it sums up very well: “Director Smith visits five unusual homes and talks to the people who built or adapted them. His subjects include an alligator wrangler who lives on a houseboat in a Louisiana bayou; an American actress who made her fortune on Japanese TV and then built a treehouse getaway in Hawaii; an inventor who automated his entire home; a family ... Read more »