Movie Reviews
Titles starting with L
Last Holiday
This is a remake of a 1950 British film with the same title, starring Alec Guinness in the part Queen Latifah had in the new one. The original screenplay was by J.B. Priestley. I’d really like to see that one, but it’s not available on DVD. Lady finds out she’s dying, decides to spend all her savings on a last fling, doing the things she’s dreamed about. Of course ... Read more »
The Last King of Scotland
Idi Amin Dada (there is some confusion about his real name, and even his birthdate) styled himself His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. That he was a thug and a megalomaniac should have been obvious ... Read more »
The Last Man on Earth
I hadn’t been aware that Richard Matheson’s excellent 1954 novel I Am Legend had been made not just twice, but three times, until I saw this listing for the MGM Channel’s “Price of Fear” festival on Halloween night. I had seen Charlton Heston in The Omega Man (awful, just awful) when it was new, and saw the ... Read more »
The Last of Sheila
It seems that Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins and Stephen “Into the Woods” Sondheim had a fairly lengthy affair in the ‘70s. They were both deeply into puzzles and mysteries, and one of the things they liked to do was arrange elaborate parties, masquerades, scavenger hunts and the like for their friends, who included most of the celebrities in New York. This film, ... Read more »
The Last of the Blonde Bombshells
During the War, Judi Dench played the tenor sax in an all-girl swing band. (Well, they couldn’t find a girl drummer, so a guy dressed in drag. And eventually ended up fucking every one of them.) Her husband has just died, and she realizes that those days were the best of her life. She runs into the drummer, now played by Ian Holm, who was always in love with her (or she was the only band ... Read more »
The Last Picture Show
The dying little town of Anarene, Texas, is not actually Hell, but it’s a pretty good first draft. I’ve never thought of Hell (when I think about it at all, it is only as a mind game; there is no literal Hell) as eternal flames. It’s more like a doctor’s waiting room or the Department of Motor Vehicles where your name never gets called, or like a small town in Texas. I grew up in a small ... Read more »
The Last Shot
An FBI sting involves pretending to make a movie (this apparently actually happened). Matthew Broderick is the director, totally in the dark, Alec Baldwin is the FBI producer, who is gradually seduced, as everyone who has ever touched the movie business is, into actually wanting to make this turkey. The cast is to die for, especially Toni Collette, the situation is funny, there are a lot ... Read more »
The Last Stand
Arnold decided to stage his comeback with this silly little action pic, and it pretty much tanked. Arnold just looks old, man, old. The plot concerns some very bad guys helping a Mexican drug lord escape back to the south, and the only thing that stands in his way is the sleepy little town of Sommerton Junction and it’s small police force, headed by ... Read more »
Last Train Home
Wiki says the population of China is 1,339,724,852. Over a billion of them don’t travel for the New Year’s holiday, but about 130,000,000 of them do. All at once. It is the biggest migration of humans anywhere on the planet, much bigger than the Hadj, bigger than the mind-boggling gatherings of millions on the banks of the Ganges. Most of them are returning to ... Read more »