Movie Reviews
Z
Z (1969) (Algeria, France) Z was a letter written on walls in Greece as the country was descending into a right-wing hell. It stood for “He Lives!” to the liberals of the time. And “he” was Grigoris Lambrakis, a Greek politician who was assassinated. His funeral was attended by 500,000 angry people. But the murder investigation was hindered by a fascistic and fanatical right-wing military ... Read more »
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The first face you see on the screen in this movie is my old friend Peter Brocco. He is lying down in bed. Later we see him quite a few times, in a wheelchair, playing a character named Colonel Matterson. He looks totally befuddled, suffering from some sort of senility. Believe me, Peter was never befuddled, he was one of the sharpest and sweetest guys I’ve ever known. He was in well over ... Read more »
Ship Ahoy
I probably wouldn’t have bothered with this one if it had only the second- and third-billed performers, Red Skelton and Bert Lahr, even though I like both of them. It was the top-of-the-bill star that dragged me into this rather silly, completely routine wartime patriotic mess. Eleanor Powell is the only dancer that anyone has every seriously suggested was as good as or maybe ever Read more »
Rules Don’t Apply
When someone doesn’t make a lot of movies, when there are gaps of several years between films, you have to wonder why they chose this project. Take Jane Fonda, for instance. There was a fifteen-year gap between Stanley and Iris in 1990 and the totally forgettable, really minor movie Monster-in-law in 2005. Why that film? Well, who the ... Read more »
Earth Girls are Easy
Every once in a while a movie comes along that I can enjoy much like an infant in a crib does, just for all the bright shiny colors. One that springs to mind is Speed Racer, which is not a very good movie but so goddam colorful that I enjoyed it in spite of that.
This one is actually a pretty good movie, satirical without being arch at all. It sets us ... Read more »
Closely Watched Trains
This is one of the first foreign movies I saw when I arrived at Michigan State from the redneck regions of Deepest Texas, and it’s a doozy.
Young Miloš Hrma begins his first day on the job at the sleepy little railroad station. He only wants to do as his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father have done before him: Get through life with the least possibly effort. World War II is ... Read more »
The Shop on Main Street
When I left Texas to attend Michigan State I joined the film society and took film courses. I devoured these films, stuff that never made it to Port Arthur or Beaumont, Texas. Here was a film from Czechoslovakia, of all places. (Now just Slovakia.) I knew of the Holocaust, though not many details about it. And I have just scanned the IMDb and found that, as I suspected, there were ... Read more »
Nine
Or in Base 2, 1001. We re-join Guido the blocked Italian director from 8½ , this time played by Daniel Day-Lewis. As in everything he ever did (he claims to be retired now) he is quite good in a role that requires some singing. This movie was based on a Broadway production starring Raul Julia. On Broadway, he was the only male ... Read more »
8 1/2
At the beginning of his career Federico Fellini made 6 feature films and 3 shorts. Counting the shorts as ½ of a movie, that meant he had made 7½ films. So what should he call his next film? Well, how about 111.1? Oh, wait, that’s in base 2. So let’s try 8½. Looks a lot better.
All those early features were in the school of what ... Read more »
The Dirty Dozen
There is a select handful of World War II movies that never show a battle and still manage to be really great. There are based-on-fact ones like The Great Escape, and there are made-up ones like Operation Crossbow, The Guns of Navarone, and The Eagle Has Landed. They operate like heist movies, which I love, ... Read more »