Movie Reviews
Uptown Girls
A 22-year-old who has never grown up meets an 8-year-old who has never been a child. The adult is in love with an empty-headed geek who plays insipid “rock” music. The kid’s dad is in a coma. Then … oh, screw it. You know the drill. We rented this because we like Dakota Fanning a lot, and figured that even if the movie sucked she’d be okay. Well, she was … but I’d forgotten she ... Read more »
The Upside of Anger
A woman’s husband has just walked out on her and her four daughters. She’s pissed at him and drinks a lot. A washed-up ballplayer neighbor who also drinks a lot comforts her, and they become lovers. There are domestic squabbles with the kids. There is a big surprise at the end, which a lot of critics didn’t like, but I did.
I experienced my usual trouble feeling sorry for these ... Read more »
The UP Series: Seven Up! / 7 Plus Seven / 21 Up/ 28 Up / 35 Up / 42 Up
Give me the child until the age of 7, and I will give you the man.
- Ignatius Loyola
This is without a doubt one of the highest achievements of documentary filmmaking, or of cinema of any sort, for that matter. (Since I wrote this, there has been a 49-Up and a 56-Up, ... Read more »
Astro Boy
Sometimes going to a movie with very low expectations is the very thing you need to enjoy it. My expectations for this one were below zero. I have no interest in Japanese anime, and no knowledge of the hero other than he looks pretty stupid. If you dressed him in red-and-white-checkered dungarees he’d look a lot like Bob’s Big Boy. Not a promising beginning. And the story isn’t much, ... Read more »
Up in the Air
There is a film in theaters now, which I haven’t seen yet, The Messenger, that shows a worse job than the one shown here. In that film two soldiers have the duty of going to the homes of men and women killed in action and informing the families that their loved one is dead. In other words, they get to do that scene from Saving Private ... Read more »
Up in Arms
At this late date many people probably have no idea how big Danny Kaye was in the late ‘40s and 1950s. His movies were huge hits. His musical style was distinctly his own. He was a one-man show, with everybody else in the films basically bouncing off his enormous energy and movement. Most of what he did was uniquely his own thing, from his rubber face to his tongue-twisting patter songs. ... Read more »
Up and Down
Two guys are filling a truck with gas, and discussing what they’d eat and what they wouldn’t eat. Mice are discussed, and rats, and horses. One says he went to Thailand and bought something that smelled real good being deep fried. Couldn’t tell what it was, but he was eating and liking it, and the vendor opened his box and dipped something in batter, and it was a bat. “I nearly vomited!” ... Read more »
Up
It sometimes strikes me as odd that in these reviews, I often devote pages and pages to films I hated, and like amounts to films that were only so-so but which sparked off a tirade on one thing or another … and then I often have little to say about the really, really, really good movies. I guess it’s a case of, when something is that good, what can I say? This one is like that; Pixar have ... Read more »
Unstoppable
Denzel Washington is the veteran engineer who has to attempt to stop a runaway train when someone else’s carelessness lets it get up a head of steam in the yard. He’s accompanied by the obligatory rookie (Chris Pine) who has to be shown his by-the-book ways aren’t enough out here in the real world. There is the usual corporate malfeasance as the suits at headquarters try to figure out the ... Read more »
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
This movie has always had a special place in my heart, because I saw it during it’s initial run at Radio City Music Hall, the only time I have ever been there. Me and a friend, Phil Richey, both of us aged 17, had driven from SE Texas to NYC in a 1951 Hudson Wasp (“Three Teenagers Go to New York” our local paper said when we got back), to see the World’s Fair. I’m still amazed that we ... Read more »