The Magnificent Ambersons

This was the second film Orson Welles made in Hollywood, and the first one he didn’t control entirely. He never again had the sort of blank check he had for Citizen Kane, and spent much of his life trying to raise the money he needed for his independent projects. So the studio took control of this one when it was finished, and cut one ... Read more »

The Magnificent Seven

The difference between this and the Japanese source material can be summed up very simply: This is a good action movie. Seven Samurai is a great movie. And one of the main reasons is simple, too. There is no macho posturing in Kurosawa’s masterpiece. Shamada, played by the great Takashi Shimura, and his six sidekicks would Read more »

The Magnificent Seven

There are some excellent “Making of” DVD extras here. I watched them all, and finally someone (the director, Antoine Fuqua) mentioned Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no Samurai), Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, without which this thing would never have been made. To give him credit, Fuqua listed it as the film that made him want to make ... Read more »

Magnolia

Paul Thomas Anderson proclaims this is his favorite of the films he has made. We begin with three strange events narrated by Ricky Jay (the only man alive who could flay you alive with playing cards at twenty paces). His point is that strange coincidences do happen:

A man named Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was murdered by (maybe; they could have been set up) three men named Green, ... Read more »

Magnum Force

Number two in the Dirty Harry saga. I have to say I found this one a little improbable. There is a secret group of rookie motorcycle patrolmen who are carrying out vigilante justice in San Francisco. The folks they kill all richly deserve killing, but this is too raw for even Harry Callahan. And actually, aside from a few lapses like torturing the kidnapper in the first film, Harry ... Read more »

The Maid

There was a time in my life when I had a cleaning service come to the house once a week and tidy things up. That’s my only experience of household help. Even that little bit made me uncomfortable. I think if I got rich I could get used to having employees to garden, clean, and polish the Rolls and feed the polo ponies, but I think I’d want to keep it on an employer/employee basis. Some ... 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 Major and the Minor

This was Billy Wilder’s first film as a director. It is also a real education in just how much the world had changed in 70 years. Ginger Rogers doesn’t have enough money to take the train home, so she dresses down and pretends to be 12 to qualify for the youth fare, but the conductors aren’t buying it when they catch her smoking. (No 12-year-old could possibly ... Read more »

Major Barbara

I’ve not seen a lot of George Bernard Shaw’s plays, just Saint Joan on the stage, Pygmalion (1938) with Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard, and of course My Fair Lady on stage and screen, if that counts. Here is Hiller again in the title role, this time opposite Rex Harrison. It left me a bit confused, and I guess ... Read more »

Major League

The owner of the Cleveland Indians dies and his ex-showgirl wife inherits the team. She hates Cleveland (well, who doesn’t?), and wants to move to Miami. But she can’t do it unless the team draws fewer than 800,000 fans. So she fires all the best players—not that Cleveland had any at that time—and hires a bunch of weirdos, rejects, retreads, and assorted losers. Naturally, they overcome ... Read more »