Movie Reviews
Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Here’s a book that could easily qualify as the Great American Novel. It’s certainly on my Top Ten, and it has moved and influenced a great many others since its publication over 50 years ago. This is a movie about that. Novelists, mostly from the south, tell us of their thoughts about and reactions to this novel, along with a few celebrities like Oprah and Tom Brokaw, and read passages ... Read more »
Heroes
Over the last five years or so I have managed to get my regular television viewing down to approximately 0 (zero) hours per week. By that I mean sitting down on the couch on Sunday at 9, for instance, to see a regularly scheduled show. (Lee has the TV on all day to a news station, or sometimes a movie, but I don’t watch or listen … and actually, neither does she. ... Read more »
Hero
It is not possible to debate the incredible beauty of this film. It is one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen. Scene follows scene of awesome beauty, color, movement, incredible landscapes. It is not possible to debate the grandeur of it, either. There are scenes with many thousands, and not all of it is a CGI crowd, though some of it is certainly augmented that way. It is not ... Read more »
Hereafter
It could have been a routine spook story, but it’s directed by Clint Eastwood, and you know he wouldn’t waste his time with any Amityville Horror bullshit. Matt Damon is a man who seems to be able to communicate with the dead. Not in any table-knocking dim room with sheets hung over helium balloons, but just by taking someone’s hand. And he hates it. He doesn’t ... Read more »
Ghost Town
The reason for ghosts, it is said, is that the spirit of the dead has unfinished business to attend to and thus is unable to move on to whatever comes next. This was explored in the rather sappy but fun Ghost (which was saved from ordinariness by Whoopi Goldberg). Bertram Pincus, DDS (the brilliant Brit, Ricky Gervais), an irritating misanthrope, dies for seven ... Read more »
The Help
There’s been a lot of controversy, of the kind I try not to pay a lot of attention to. How dare a white woman write a book that tries to get into the heads of black maid/nannies in 1963? That sort of thing. But there was one article that made me think, about “White savior movies.” You know the story, you’ve seen it dozens of times. A white person comes into a community of (insert non-white ... Read more »
Get Smart
Get Smart (2008) It’s time to reiterate my rule for reviewing comedy movies: I don’t recommend, I merely report whether or not I laughed, and if I laughed, was it a titter, a guffaw, a whoop, or some other quantity of mirth. Everybody laughs at different things, and if you recommend a comedy to someone, even someone you know well, there’s a good chance he or she will have a long, sour face ... Read more »
Hell’s Angels
The story is ludicrous, the acting laughable, and the American accents of these British upper class people are way beyond hilarious … but boy oh boy, those airplanes! Never before or since have so many authentic aircraft been assembled and flown with such derring-do. Howard Hughes himself flew the final scene, when his stunt pilots refused to attempt it. He crashed the plane, but he got ... Read more »
Get Low
Robert Duvall decides to hold his funeral before he is dead. We’re not sure why, but it turns out he has some things to say to the rest of the small town on whose outskirts he lives, and with whom he has barely interacted for 40 years. I thought the revelation at the end was a little long-winded. Duvall is always worth watching, and there is a very nice smaller, quirky role for Bill Murray ... Read more »
Gerry
This movie immediately sank into the mire of my Bottom Ten Worst Films of All Time list, a list I don’t actually keep and which probably holds a lot more than ten awful films. It’s an honor I don’t bestow lightly. The first five minutes is shots of a car. Driving through the desert. Driving and driving and driving. Then two assholes, both named Gerry, get out and ... Read more »