Happy New Year

… is a remake of La bonne année, a 1973 film by Claude Lelouch that is, by all accounts, a lot better than this one. But since I haven’t seen that one, I came to this one unprejudiced, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It begins as a simple heist movie, which isn’t bad at all, but in the middle it turns into something quite different, ... Read more »

Happy, Texas

Here is one of those little gems that show you don’t need a big budget to make a great comedy. What you need is a good idea and a great cast. The plot: Two small-time crooks accidentally escape from prison when the bus carrying them wrecks. They steal an RV owned by two gay men who travel the country organizing beauty pageants. Not the Miss America type pageant, more like the Jon Benet ... Read more »

Happy Valley

Oddly enough, this British six-part mini-series reminded me of the movie Fargo, though only in its broad outlines. Both of them star a female detective a lot smarter than anyone around her (though Sarah Lancashire in this one is not pregnant). Both involve a kidnapping by a gang of real stupid people, instigated by a cowardly asshole who has no idea what he’s ... Read more »

Hard Candy

There’s a lot I’d like to say about this film, but I can’t get started without a small

SPOILER WARNING!!!

I say small, because I think just about everybody knows about the twist that occurs about 15 minutes into the film. Hell, it’s given away even by the picture on the DVD box. Which leads me to muse … in these days ... Read more »

A Hard Day’s Night

Watching this for the first time in many years, I was surprised to find that it’s not nearly as wonderful as I remember it. In fact, in many ways, it’s not even very good at all.

The best things first. Best of all is Richard Lester’s direction, particularly in the musical numbers. Each one is handled differently, and they blew our collective minds in 1964. Lester is credited, ... Read more »

The Hard Way

Generally considered to be Ida Lupino’s best role, and one that Bette Davis passed on, and later regretted. It is also said to have been inspired by Ginger Rogers’ mother, but I wonder. It’s true that Lela Rogers was deeply involved in Ginger’s career, but nothing I’ve read makes her out to be the scheming, back-stabbing stage mother (actually, big sister, they changed that so Ginger and ... Read more »

Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Harlan and I had been corresponding for some time—this was back in the late 1970s—when my travels on the way to a convention took me through Los Angeles. I arrived at LAX only to find that my connecting flight had been cancelled, and I had seven or eight hours to kill in one of the world’s most boring places. I decided to call Harlan, just to talk for a while. “Hop in a ... Read more »

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

H & K smoke some really good dope, get a gigantic case of the munchies, and nothing will do but that they consume mass quantities of sliders at the grease palace we don’t have out here on the Left Coast. It becomes a quest, which takes them through Princeton University, jail, and a ride on a wild cheetah which they turn on to some dope they’ve stolen from the police. That’s right, a ... Read more »

Harold and Maude

Here is the very definition of a cult movie. When it was released neither the reviews nor the box office were very good. But the people who did like the film, loved the film. Its reputation grew over the years and now it has made many lists of the 100 Best Comedies, or best romances, or even best movies of all time. I guess it’s also a great example of movies the ... Read more »

Harper

Paul Newman plays Ross McDonald’s Lew Archer (re-named Harper because Paul wanted another movie beginning with H, like Hud and The Hustler, and the next year, Hombre) and it’s lots of fun. He would play Harper again ten years later in The Drowning Pool. We enjoyed the Los Angeles ... Read more »