Movie Reviews
Titles starting with C
The Captain is a Lady
Charles Coburn is one of my favorite character actors from this period, in movies like The Devil in Miss Jones and The More the Merrier. But even he and Beulah Bondi can’t rescue this off-the-shelf script about a crusty old sea captain forced to live in a retirement home for old women. I gave up at about the 30 minute mark.
Captain Marvel
Once more, once more into the breach, my friends, I charge into the theater in the fading hope that a new superhero movie is worth watching. This one seemed at least a little promising. I really like Bree Larson, and her costume didn’t look like some 13-year-old boy’s fantasy of the girl he would most like to … well, you know. Anyway, though a black superhero is innately more interesting ... Read more »
Captain Nemo and the Underwater City
This one was so bad, so stupid, that I can’t imagine why I finished watching it. Cheesy sets, Robert Ryan as a wimpy Nemo, Chuck Connors as the he-man lead, and a couple of jerks for not-very-funny comic relief. I guess I was too bored to turn it off.
Captain Phillips
First of all, this movie is not Best Picture Oscar material. It just isn’t. Having said that, let me say that it is a crackerjack thriller, tense almost from the opening scenes, beautifully filmed (though I’m glad I saw it on our high-def TV instead of in the theater, as almost every shot is a neck-breaking shakycam). The tension builds on a straight line that rises right to the final ... Read more »
Captains Courageous
I’ve never read the book by Kipling, but the Wiki summary doesn’t even mention the character of Manuel Fidello, for which Spencer Tracy won an Oscar. I have to assume Hollywood made him up. Which really shortchanged Mickey Rooney, who has almost nothing to do as the son of the captain of the Grand Banks fishing boat, who in the book befriended the stuck-up little rich kid (Freddie ... Read more »
Captains of the Clouds
Made in the summer of ’41, released early the next year, when we were in the Big War alongside Canada, who had been fighting along with the Brits since ’39. I can’t recall another movie about the RCAF, and it looks like this was made with their full cooperation. The chief delight here is for fans of aircraft, as many of the shots include hundreds of yellow-winged trainers and fighters, and ... Read more »
Capturing the Friedmans
As good a documentary as I’ve ever seen on the elusive nature of “truth,” and how unlikely it often is for things to work out as neatly as they usually do in books and on television. A high school teacher and his son are accused of child molestation. Everybody lies, there is a Crucible sort of witch hunt, and at the end you don’t know where you stand. ... Read more »
Carandirú
Prisons are different south of the Rio Grande. I’m not saying those in the US are a lot of fun, but I suspect most prisoners in Attica or Leavenworth would elect to spend ten years there rather than do two or three in a Mexican or Brazilian slammer. Carandiru in Sao Paolo was a particularly bad one, and this is its story. Basically, the prisoners ran it, the only function of the guards ... Read more »
Carnage
This is an awful, terrible movie. It’s awfully delicious and terribly funny. I figured when I heard the plot line that it was going to be deeply serious, with people baring their souls, a bit like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It is a 4-person play, like Woolf, taking place in real time on one set, except for two outside framing ... Read more »
Carnal Knowledge
I think just about the best thing about the ‘70s was the movies. Don’t even talk about the clothes! A handful of movies broke new ground, led us in new directions that lasted most of the decade, until the mega-million blockbuster and big studio timidity shut much of the experimental stuff down. We may be coming out of that today, with more adventurous films appearing to compete with the ... Read more »