Movie Reviews
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Two best friends are screwing each other’s wives. It was hard for me to figure which of these four people I disliked the most. I can’t find anything good to say about any of them, nor the story.
We Bought a Zoo
In 2006 the Benjamin Mee family bought the Dartmoor Zoological Park in Devon, England for about a million pounds. When they had it back on its feet (or hooves, or paws), Mee wrote a memoir about it and sold the film rights. The producers decided to move the story to California, the first of a series of mistakes that turned what might have been a real delight into a pretty routine and ... Read more »
The Way to the Stars
The Way to the Stars (1945) For some reason this was re-titled Johnny in the Clouds for American release. It was Trevor Howard’s first real film role (his first was uncredited) and an early bit part for Jean Simmons. The cast is a roll call of some of the best British stars and character actors of the day: Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Stanley Holloway, Basil ... Read more »
Way Out West
Made by Hal Roach, but distributed through MGM. Like Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy were not treated well when they moved to the big studios. No one there understood the sort of creative process used by these geniuses, they wanted everything to be scripted, no improvisation, and they released the movies as B-pictures, not the A treatment they deserved. Stan Laurel (the creative side of ... Read more »
The Birth of a Nation
One of the best, and one of the worst, movies ever made. It’s always a shock to revisit this movie and see just how horrible it is. The very first shot is of African slaves on the auction block, and D.W. Griffith, that awful man, points to this as the roots of division, or something like that, and seems to be implying that it’s the slaves’ fault. He refers to “The Cause,” i.e., human ... Read more »
Birth
A man dies while jogging. Ten years later, a 10-year-old shows up at his widow’s fabulous New York duplex and announces he is Sean, her husband. Reincarnation. The movie gets off to a good start. The whole family is there, and they are not gullible. They react in the way you would expect intelligent people to react. This isn’t your ordinary junk stupid thriller. Nicole Kidman is terrific ... Read more »
The Birdman of Alcatraz
… really should have been called the Birdman of Leavenworth, but I agree the title the book writer and then the movie producer used is sexier. But Robert Stroud had no birds during his years at Alcatraz, they weren’t allowed there. All the work he did in bird diseases, all his canary breeding, took place in Kansas.
You have to be careful when talking about a movie “based on fact.” ...
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The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
The Negro Leagues in their various complicated incarnations were one more shameful Jim Crow remnant of slavery, made necessary by many factors, including the implacable opposition to integrated teams by the scumbag first Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain “Cocksucker” Landis. (I made up the nickname, but he deserves it. He also banished Shoeless Joe Jackson to the bleachers ... Read more »
Billy Liar
I’ve thought I should see this film for a long time, but something kept putting me off. Maybe I got the wrong impression, maybe I thought it was going to be real serious, hadn’t realized that it’s mostly a comedy. And now it’s fifty years old.
It was directed by John Schlesinger, one of the informal group from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s known as either the “British New Wave,” the ...
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The Way Back
Peter Weir doesn’t make a lot of movies (his last one was the wonderful {{Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
}} in 2003), and when he does I pay attention. This one is based on the true story of an escape from a Russian gulag in the early days of The Great Patriotic War, a 4000-mile trek through Siberia, the Gobi Desert, and the Himalayas … that is almost certainly a ...
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