Movie Reviews
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
We had just seen the FX Channel’s eight-episode anthology series Feud, detailing the rivalry and bad blood between those two Hollywood divas, Joan Crawford, played well by Jessica Lange (though she looks sort of weird), and Bette Davis, played wonderfully by Susan Sarandon. She even manages to look like Bette sometimes. The making of this movie was the ... Read more »
Two Lovers and a Bear
Tatiana Maslany grew up in one of the least inviting cities in the world, in my opinion: Regina, Saskatchewan. She knows something about cold. She has said that she used to walk to school backwards so the wind would not frostbite her face. So she knew what she was doing when she took the part of a troubled young woman in Apex, Nunavut, which is so far north the compasses don’t work ... Read more »
Human Planet
Here is an interesting nature documentary. The filmmakers track down and document the strange and infinitely adaptable animal known as Homo sapiens. These strange creatures live in, and often thrive in, biomes as diverse as the ocean, the desert, the ice cap, jungle, mountains, plains, rivers, and that oddest environment of all: the sprawling hives they build and ... Read more »
Born on the Fourth of July
Yeah, Tom Cruise is a total dingbat, and I really hate his proselytizing for those hucksters known as the “Church” (what a laugh) of Scientology … but I have to admit the dude can act. This is the true story of Ron Kovic, a gung-ho soldier from a gung-ho family, who got his spine broken by a bullet in Vietnam and never walked again. It is a truly harrowing story, not fun to look at, but no ... Read more »
The Pirates of Penzance
If you don’t know what a Savoyard is, then you aren’t a fan of the comic operas of Sir W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan. The operas are over 100 years old, and they don’t speak to everybody today. But I am a Sayoyard, big time. I have seen them all, and though the last ones were not prize-winners, most of them are. And the best of the lot are The Mikado, ... Read more »
The Silver Horde
The title refers to salmon runs in Alaska, not the metal silver. This was filmed on location in Ketchikan, which is why the snow heaped on the roofs looks so real, I guess. I TiVoed this because it starred Joel McCrea in only his second leading role, and Jean Arthur, who was not yet a big star despite having been in fifty films, including many silent ones. She got fifth billing. They are ... Read more »
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew From London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes
(Second Review) I vividly recall seeing this for the first time. It was the summer after my graduation and I was working for my Uncle Chuck in Detroit, earning money for incidentals to be used at Michigan State, where I would start in September. (I blew most of it going to movies.) It was a roadshow engagement, at the Cinerama theater, with reserved seats and an intermission. It had me ... Read more »
21
They like to say that a movie was based on true events. I’d say this one was more “inspired by,” since it changes almost everything. In other words, this is almost 100% bullshit. There really was an MIT blackjack team (actually, several of them over the years) and they really did do well. But they never made $100,000 or more in a single night, as we see here. That would have been stupid. ... Read more »
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
I’m a big fan of J.K. Rowling, both as an author and a human being. She is a huge contributor to several charities, and politically has donated £1,000,000 to the Labour Party, another million to the anti-separatist cause in Scotland, and another million against Brexit. She is reputed to be the only writer who has ever made a billion dollars at her craft, and I can believe it, with the ... Read more »
Southland Tales
Going in, I didn’t realize this was the second film by Richard Kelly, the writer-director of Donnie Darko, which is a film that has a cult following that does not include me. (I gave it my shortest review to be found in these pages: “Huh?”) If you liked that film you possibly should disregard this review. Because this one is way, way, ... Read more »