Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Like many a comic actor before her, Melissa McCarthy would like to show she be taken seriously in a serious movie. She’s off to a good start with this one, picking up an Oscar nomination for the true story of Lee Israel, a fiction writer whose career is in the toilet, and who finds out she has a talent for creating forged letters from famous writers. For a while there she’s living pretty ... Read more »
The Candidate
Is there any field of human endeavor where the bullshit is piled deeper and higher than a political campaign? I don’t think so, and I include cattle feedlots. This film pretty much stunned me when it first came out, and I know I wasn’t alone. Back in 1968 we had all talked about being “Clean for Gene!”, meaning Eugene McCarthy, or had high hopes for George McGovern. Remember him? The ... Read more »
Candide
So far as I know, Leonard Bernstein only had one flop, and this is it. In 1956 it ran for 73 shows, to critical disdain. But the cast album was a hit, and ever since people have been tinkering with it. What was wrong the first time? Some say it was a heavy-handed book by Lillian Hellman. Some say the story wasn’t right for the time, like Bob Fosse’s Chicago, which didn’t ... Read more »
Candy
Some films hold up fifty years later. Some don’t. This doesn’t. I recall thinking it was pretty funny, pretty racy, when it was new. Now it is just painfully silly. Ewa Aulin is Candy, who seems to drop to Earth from outer space, like Mr. Bean. She is clearly as naïve as a space alien. Then she is off on a series of adventures, meeting men who all want to take advantage of her. I read that ... Read more »
The Canterville Ghost
Here’s a short story by Oscar Wilde that has been filmed no less than 11 times and, from what I can see about the versions that have a plot summary, never very close to the original story. It seems that all the producers wanted was the idea of a ghost in a castle, then worked endless variations on it. Oh, well. This is the first version, and it’s very good. Charles Laughton is the ghost. ... Read more »
Capote
By now the events surrounding the massacre of the Clutter family in Kansas have passed into legend, into the cultural filing cabinet along with Jack the Ripper and other horrors we know entirely too much about. This event would have been long forgotten except for Truman Capote’s book and the later movie In Cold Blood. I’ve never read it, but I saw the ... Read more »
Captain Blood
One of the all-time great swashbucklers. Errol Flynn got lucky when landing this part after several more famous actors had to turn it down. It made him a big star, and it’s east to see why. He is absolutely magnetic, and so is his co-star Olivia de Havilland. There is a long action scene with pirates attacking a town which will remind everyone who has been to Disneyland of the ... Read more »
Captain Fantastic
This one is bound to make you think. Viggo Mortensen and his wife are old hippies who have been raising six children out in the forest. They learn to kill a deer with a bow and arrow and butcher it. They learn other survival skills. It’s all sort of like a boot camp, and it looks brutal. But the kids seem to like it. And Viggo is not really a survivalist nut, though he sometimes looks like ... Read more »
The Captain Hates the Sea
The Captain Hates the Sea (1934) This was 1934’s version of The Love Boat, I guess. Victor McLaglan, John Gilbert, and a lot of the leading character actors of the day embark on a pleasure cruise, where a lot of stories unfold. It was Gilbert’s last film; after this he drank himself to death, a project he had embarked on a long time ago. Ironically, he played a character who was on the ... Read more »
Captain Horatio Hornblower
I read all the Hornblower books some years ago, tracing his progress through the ranks of the Royal Navy from seasick midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet. They are great books, though not quite as wonderful as Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin sea stories. This movie combines the plots of the first three Hornblower novels, and it’s a rip-roarin’ swashbucklin’ show indeed. It even seems ... Read more »