Movie Reviews
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I just re-read my comments on the first four films, and there’s a funny thing. I rated #4 the best of the lot … and I can’t really remember much about it. I’ve been a fan of both the books and the movies, and I’m waiting along with everybody else for HP and the Deathly Hallows. (I don’t think Harry will die, do you?) So … why didn’t this one excite me more?
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I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Sometimes a second feature at the drive-in is a bonus, sometimes it’s a cross you have to bear … but only for 30 minutes or so, until the screen has been stunk up so bad that you flee in terror. This one was a 15-minute stinker.
Hot Rod
Some films are so bad you almost hate to attack them. It’s like making fun of a retarded person. This one is produced by Lorne Michaels, who ought to be ashamed of himself, not only for insulting me with this drivel, but for keeping that walking corpse, “Saturday Night Live,” shuffling along, belching and farting and making messes on the carpet, for twenty years after it stopped being very ... Read more »
The Heartbreak Kid
A young man who is having an affair with an older, married woman falls in love with her daughter. Not a very nice thing to do, I think we’d all agree. Hideously inappropriate behavior. But we like Benjamin in The Graduate, because though he’s not man enough (he’s 18) to own up to it with the daughter, he struggles with it. He knows he’s behaved badly. We like ... Read more »
The Kingdom
Let me say it right up front: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a seriously sick society. They are by no means the only one, but as they are our “allies” in the “War on Terror,” it makes me hate them all the more. If there were a button here on my desk that, when pushed, would cause every male adherent of the Wahabi sect of Islam to vanish (whether to Paradise or to Hell, I don’t really care; ... Read more »
Michael Clayton
Here is the first directing effort by Tony Gilroy, who wrote the very smart scripts for all three Bourne movies, and this one is super-sharp, too. Aside from one moment when a man gets out of a car at a moment that turns out to have been a very lucky one for him, without any reasonable motivation that I can see, it all hangs together. How nice to see a movie with ... Read more »
Fred Claus
What’s that? The sound of jingle bells, this early November? That must mean it’s time for Hollywood to start dropping its latest bunch of reindeer turds marketed as “Christmas movies.” We’ve been getting them regular as vegan bowel movements for many years now, sometimes only one, sometimes, in a year when the creative laxative is really working, as many as two or three. Mostly I haven’t ... Read more »
The Golden Compass
This was supposed to be the next fantasy franchise, like Shrek, Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia. ‘Fraid not. The books, which I haven’t read, were popular, and apparently thought-provoking. I may even read them myself, as it seems they strongly attack organized religion, which is always ... Read more »
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Even lamer than the first one. It’s all recycled Indiana Jones, with the idea that ancient people had nothing better to do with their time but to construct elaborate deathtraps for people who wouldn’t come along to set them off for 500 years or so. What was fun in Raiders of the Lost Ark, because it took us back to those days of awful cliff-hanger black-and-white ... Read more »
Cloverfield
What an odd little movie. We had been warned that sitting close has actually caused cases of vertigo, due to it being filmed entirely with hand-held cameras. It’s a point-of-view movie, but it’s not The Lady in the Lake. I didn’t figure that, being at the drive-in, this would be a problem, and it wasn’t. The problem was that it was too dark for outdoor viewing. ... Read more »