Movie Reviews

Forrest Gump

(1994)

Don’t get Lee started on this one. I enjoyed it, but thought its huge success was weird. Highly overrated, and not one of Tom Hanks’ best performances, much less Oscar-worthy. Morgan Freeman was robbed.

The Forgotten

(2004)

… how odd. I just watched this movie ten minutes ago, and now I can’t remember a thing about it. It’s like it was wiped right out of my memory. Just pulled up out of my mind and into outer space, like I was abducted by space aliens. Ooops! Did I just accidentally reveal the “surprise” ending? I can’t remember.

Forget Paris

(1995)

A romantic comedy that works is a pearl beyond price. Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s seemed to churn out great ones effortlessly, perhaps because romance was not sneered at so much back then, and writers knew how to write it, and actors know how to play it, and most of all, great directors knew how to give it just the right touch. These days we’re more cynical, ... Read more »

A Foreign Affair

(1948)

Jean Arthur stars in a film by Billy Wilder that was shot in Berlin in 1947 just before the blockade by Russia. Or at least the exteriors were shot there, though I doubt the actors ever got closer to Germany than the Paramount lot on Melrose. Look carefully and you can see the rear projection in all the outdoor shots involving the stars. She is a congresswoman on a fact-finding mission to ... Read more »

Forbidden Games

(Jeux interdits, France, 1952)

It’s 1940 in France and refugees from Paris are fleeing down a country road, being strafed by Nazi airplanes. Little 5-year-old Paulette, probably Jewish though the movie never says, chases after her little puppy, her parents chase her, and both parents and the puppy are killed by gunfire. You don’t get much more heart-breaking than that, right? But director René Clément doesn’t indulge in ... Read more »

For Your Consideration

(2006)

First he was Nigel Tufnel in the classic rock spoof This is Spinal Tap. Then he took on small-town amateur theatrics, then dog shows, and folk music. Now he tackles the world of small-time movie making. Who? Why, none other than Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest. Yes, he really is a peer of the realm. He got his start with the Read more »

Follow the Fleet

(1936)

Another one of those musicals with silly, totally forgettable plots, this one involving sailors. Lucille Ball and Betty Grable make brief appearances, singer Harriet Hilliard is the second lead and Randolph Scott is there, wooden as usual, but of course it’s Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers who make the cash register ring. The saving grace is some great music by Irving Berlin, such as “Let ... Read more »

The Fog of War

(2003)

Most of the film is an interview with Robert McNamara, going back over his career in government, mostly dealing the war in Southeast Asia. He also deals with W.W.II, where he served with Curtis LeMay, the man behind the firebombings of mostly civilian Japanese targets, and he observes that if the Axis had won the war, they would all have been tried as war criminals. True in a sense, though ... Read more »

The Fog

(2005)

… or, The Curse of the Lepers! Or … Sort Of Like The Blob, Only Not So Solid and Gray Instead of Red. But you gotta admit, this movie is not an underachiever. It has managed in a very short time to appear on the coveted IMDb’s Bottom 100, at #100. With a bullet. Which is what John Carpenter should have put through his head ... Read more »

Flushed Away