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 »

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 Unsuspected

Claude Rains is a radio personality who tells stories of true crime, sort of like all those hundreds of TV shows these days that do the same thing, only re-enacted. He is scheming to commit the perfect crime, which will leave him very rich. We all know what happens to “perfect crimes” in those Code days, don’t we? I watched this because of Rains, and the director, Michael Curtiz, one of ... 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 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 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 »

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 »

Up to His Ears

The original French title translates as “The Troubles of a Chinaman in China.” It is taken (very broadly) from a story by Jules Verne, of all people. Jean-Paul Belmondo is a suicidal billionaire whose interest in life is revived when he learns he his broke. But there is a contract out on him, and before long literally half of Hong Kong is out to kill him. He is accompanied by Ursula ... Read more »

Upside Down

What a horrible mess this movie is. The premise: somewhere in some topsy-turvy universe is a pair of planets literally within spitting distance of each other. Here are the three rules:

1. All matter is pulled by the gravity of the world that it comes from, and not the other.
2. An object’s weight can be offset using matter from the opposite world (inverse matter).
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