Movie Reviews
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
For starters, this is a terrible title. When people are talking about your film, you don’t want them to worry about looking foolish by getting it wrong. Which modifier goes with which verb? Oh, well, I’m not sure, and I really can’t be bothered.
Oskar is a 12-or-so-year-old boy who resides in Manhattan and on the extremely (or is it incredibly?) smart side of the autistic spectrum. ... Read more »
Friends With Money
Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Jennifer Aniston. How could you go wrong with such a cast? Especially the first three. Maybe by telling an improbable story featuring four women I don’t like—and their husbands, who all seem younger than them, and who don’t have much to do. Aniston is friends with all three, the only one unmarried. She used to be a teacher, but now she’s ... Read more »
Extras, Second Season
EPISODE ONE: Orlando Bloom. He’s obsessed with being the sexiest man in England, or on Earth. He keeps magazines with polls putting him in first place, and will show them to anyone. He is particularly angry when Johnny Depp places on these lists. “On Pirates of the Caribbean? I was the one who got to kiss Kiera Knightly. She wanted no ... Read more »
Friday Night Lights
God, football is a shitty sport. Brutal, violent, stupid, played by people so padded they don’t even look human anymore. Only ice hockey and boxing are worse, and it’s a close call. This is a movie that is almost overwhelmed by its technique (see The Son). Almost every shot is very close, few shots last more than 3 seconds, many much ... Read more »
The Freshman
Harold Lloyd was just as much a comic genius as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but not as well-known. Ironically, it’s at least partly because he was such an astute businessman. He retained the copyrights to most of his movies, and asked a price too high for ‘50s television, which was showing many things that were free for the asking. But interest in him was renewed in the ‘60s when … ... Read more »
Extras
That daft Limey git (and I say that with the greatest affection), Ricky Gervais, has done it again. I’m really not too interested in the goings-on in an office. It’s an environment I’ve managed to avoid all my life, and I’m thankful for it. I don’t get the jokes in Dilbert, that’s how far removed I am from places like that. But in “The Office,” Gervais managed to ... Read more »
Expo: The Magic of the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893
I wanted to see this because I’d just read a book about the construction of the White City, and about the serial killer, Herman Mudgett, who stalked it and murdered at least 20 young women in a hotel he built specially for the purpose. I hadn’t realized just what a big deal it was. Everything about it was mind-boggling, and it would amaze people even today. I went to the 1954-65 New York ... Read more »
Experiment in Terror
I’ve been reflecting sadly that it is probably very difficult to get a film like this made today. Lee Remick is a bank teller. She comes home one night and is grabbed from behind by a man who says she is going to help him rob the bank, or he will kill her and/or her little sister. This is all very noir, very close in, and very sinister. Don’t contact the police; I’ll know. She calls the ... Read more »
Freedom Writers
Here’s a heart-warming movie, based on real events (but probably jazzed up a bit, as these things tend to be), that depressed the hell out of me. There’s nothing really new here: Hilary Swank, as real-life teacher Erin Gruwell, enters a classroom in Long Beach on her first day as a teacher in 1994, two years after the Rodney King riots … a classroom I wouldn’t walk ... Read more »
The Exorcist
Here we have the granddaddy of the modern horror movie. Stories that people were fainting and vomiting during the more disturbing demonic possession scenes in the movie are largely untrue (the director, William Friedkin, claimed that most people fled the theater during the rather clinical scenes of a spinal tap being performed), but it sure as shit shocked the world.
To enjoy it, ... Read more »