Movie Reviews
Titles starting with M
My Family
Did you know … that in the 1930s, thousands of Americans of Mexican descent were rounded up by the Federal, State, and Los Angeles governments, put on boxcars, and sent to Mexico? (Estimates vary from 10,000 to 400,000, and by the very fascistic, vigilante nature of the enterprise—no records were kept—it’s impossible now to know just how many.) About 60% of them were Read more »
My Favorite Wife
Irene Dunne is washed overboard from a boat and is missing for 7 years. The story opens with Cary Grant in court having her declared dead, and marrying his new sweetheart. (Naturally, she is a bit spoiled.) And of course Irene shows up at home that very day, dressed in a sailor suit, picked up by a freighter after being marooned all those years. Her kids don’t remember her. She flies to ... Read more »
My Fellow Americans
James Garner and Jack Lemmon are ex-presidents who loathe each other, so naturally they are thrown together in an unlikely circumstance as they realize someone in the government is out to kill them. They have to make their way across the country, getting more actual contact with We the People in a few hours than either of them got in four years in the White House. It’s all good clean fun ... Read more »
My House in Umbria
A group of people with nothing in common except they were all blown up by a terrorist bomb on a train stay with the wonderful Maggie Smith in her Italian villa. Not a great movie, but fun and entertaining.
My Knees Were Jumping: Rembering the Kindertransports
In 1938 a lot of Jews in Europe could see the way things were going. Some got out, many tried, but couldn’t find a country that would take them, since Germany and Austria wouldn’t let them take any money with them so they’d arrive penniless … and let’s face it, they were, well, Jews. But after kristallnacht the British agreed to ... Read more »
My Man Godfrey
Making a screwball comedy a lost art, and it’s unlikely to be rediscovered. I can’t imagine a young enthusiast of the sort of in-your-face, gross, hyperactive shit we get for “comedy” most of the time these days sitting still for a movie like this, where everything is wit and dialogue, with never a pratfall nor fart joke. It’s their loss, believe me. William Powell is actually the scion of ... Read more »
My Name is Julia Ross
This is the movie that was later remade (and jazzed up a bit) as Dead of Winter, with Mary Steenburgen, Roddy McDowell, and Jan Rubeš. This time it is Dame May Whitty and George Macready who kidnap a young woman, Nina Foch, but this time they try to fuck with her mind while she’s drugged. She is told she is George’s wife and while she never buys into the story, ... Read more »
My One and Only
Here we have the odd and true (mostly, I suppose) story of George Hamilton, his mother, and brother, as they make their way across the country from New York to Los Angeles, and how he accidentally stumbled into a mediocre movie career. His mother is a sort of Tennessee Williams character, not awaiting her gentleman caller but actively searching him out—object: matrimony—and always finding ... Read more »
My Sister Maria
It’s hard to describe this film about the older sister of Maximilian Schell. It’s certainly not a normal documentary; it’s as far from cinema verite as you could get, each shot being carefully composed, absolutely nothing spontaneous. Maria was a very popular actress after the War, both in Germany and in the US, where she worked with Yul Brynner and Marlon Brando and Gary Cooper, among ... Read more »
My Sister’s Keeper
What was this movie doing at the drive-in? I’m not complaining, really I’m not, but I have never seen a real tear-jerker at the drive-in. I’ve seen some serious dramas, like The Departed, but ever since I was a teenager going with friends to dusk-to-dawn 5-movie marathons the flicks playing have tended to feature giant radioactive ants, creatures from outer ... Read more »