Movie Reviews
Wonder Wheel
This will probably be Woody Allen’s last or next-to-last movie (A Rainy Day in New York is in the can, but there is some question as to whether it will ever be released) since most of the people in Hollywood have belatedly decided to believe his daughter who claims he groped her, once, and so will never work with him again. They even donated his tainted money to ... Read more »
The Blob
I would have been eleven. It was a Saturday matinee in the little bijou Neches Theater in Port Neches, Texas, and as usual there were about eight animated cartoons, a few installments of some crappy serial (possibly even Commando Cody in Radar Men From the Moon, starring my future friend, Peter Brocco!). Screaming kids throwing popcorn, spilling Cokes, running in ... Read more »
Wind River
A young Arapaho woman is found almost naked, frozen solid, on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Murders on the res are investigated not only by tribal police, but by the FBI. Usually in stories like this, the FBI agent is arrogant and expects everyone to kowtow, but this one, played by Elizabeth Olsen, realizes she doesn’t know the land or the people, and that she is in over her head. ... Read more »
Maigret
Georges Simenon was an insanely prolific writer. His fiction output dwarfs even Isaac Asimov’s with over 500 novels and uncountable short stories and novellas. He was able to write up to 80 pages a day! I can’t even type that fast. Seventy-six of the novels were about his beloved character Jules Maigret, a detective with the Parisian ... Read more »
The Thing
Every once in a while a remake is actually better than the original film. This is one of those cases. While I will still always like The Thing From Another World, made in 1951 (with Gunsmoke’s James Arness in the title role!), this one is much more faithful to the original story. That was “Who Goes There?”, a novella by John W. ... Read more »
Cyrano de Bergerac
In 1990 Gérard Depardieu made a damn good version of this in the original French, and I sure wish I understood French. But I don’t, so the next best thing is the Brian Hooker translation. Jose Ferrer won a Tony in this role, and then went on to win the Oscar in this film. How one translates a play written in French, in a formal mode known as an Alexandrine, and preserve the beauty of the ... Read more »
Lost in Space
Sometimes it’s a good idea to remake a classic with new technology. Sometimes it’s not. This time it is not. I think I watched maybe an episode and a half of the original series, saw that it was silly, not funny, and that was that. Just those horrible costumes would have likely been enough. I guess what everybody remembers, even someone who never watched it, like me, is the line the robot ... Read more »
The Post
Here is a very sad one to watch. It concerns the theft by Daniel Ellsberg and publication by the New York Times of what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. This was a massive study of the Vietnam War, commissioned by the Department of Defense and labeled Top Secret, because it revealed that Robert McNamara and others knew the war ... Read more »
The Man Who Invented Christmas
Here’s one that sounded a lot better to me than it actually proved to be. Charles Dickens is in debt, and is badly blocked. His “Christmas ghost story” is not going well, and he needs a hit, because the man who is celebrated like a rock star for writing Oliver Twist has had three flops in a row and he needs the money. So he engages in imaginary conversations with ... Read more »
Lady Bird
This year there were several movies on the Best Picture final ballot that have left me wondering, What the hell was all the fuss about? This is one of them. It is a perfectly competent coming-of-age story, and about ten minutes after watching it I had forgotten all about it. To write this review I had to look it up at Wiki and read about it again. Oh, that one! I ... Read more »