Movie Reviews
Tremors II: Aftershocks
Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996) These two movies remind me of the Alien/Aliens duo in many ways.
1) Both concern monsters that are
2) unseen at first and are
3) out to eat you.
4) The second film gives you more monsters than the first one did.
5) The first films are groundbreaking (in the case of Tremors, literally), inventive, and (Alien) scary as hell ...
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Tremors 5: Bloodlines
The original Tremors was one of those movies I live for: Something that came out of nowhere, with no expectations except the feeling that a film about giant mutant killer earthworms known as “graboids” was hardly likely to be any good, and ended up blowing me away. But it was funny, and had actual scary moments, characters you actually ... Read more »
Jason Bourne
It was too much to hope for that this fourth installment of the Bourne franchise (fifth, if you count The Bourne Legacy, a Bourne without Jason Bourne) (which I liked better than most of the critics) would be as good as the first three. My biggest hope was that it wouldn’t be awful, and it’s not. It has most of the same pulse-pounding tension of the others, maybe ... Read more »
A Perfect Day
All wars are horrible, but the Yugoslav Wars from 1991 to 2001 seem to be particularly bad. You remember them? There were four different wars, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, and Slovenia, plus two “insurgencies.” People who had gotten along fine with neighbors of different faiths or ethnicities suddenly began shooting and blowing each other up. Horrible war crimes were committed. This is ... Read more »
The Girl
Every movie buff knows that Alfred Hitchcock was notorious for treating his “icy blonde” stars badly, and Tippi Hedren worst of all. At some point during the filming of Marnie she was so pissed off at him that she called him a fat pig, and from then on he never spoke to her. He would talk to someone nearby: “Please tell Miss Hedren …”
This is based on a ... Read more »
Florence Foster Jenkins
Does anyone remember Tiny Tim, the singer and ukulele player who was popular in the late ‘60s? His real name was Herbert Khaury. He was a musical oddity, with his horrible tweed jacket and stringy long hair and falsetto voice. His signature number was “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” He was married to “Miss Vicki” on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, and 40 ... Read more »
Time Bandits
Odd trivium: The real stars of this picture are six dwarfs: Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally, and Vermin. There was going to be a seventh, name of Horseflesh, but they dassn’t annoy the massive Disney machine. I mean, really! Does Disney own the rights to the very concept of seven small people in a band? Apparently so. This is unconscionable overreaching, in ... Read more »
The Prowler
I don’t know of any other movie that was quite so deep into the infamous and horrible Hollywood Blacklist as this one. I don’t think it was deliberate. But it was written by Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler, both blacklistees, under the “front” names of two German writers: Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm. (It is Trumbo’s voice that is hosting the late-night radio program we hear!) Joseph ... Read more »
It’s a Wonderful Life
Some years ago the Eugene Register-Guard had a contest. They posed 50 questions about this movie. The winner got … well, frankly I can’t remember what the prize was, but it wasn’t a Cadillac Eldorado, or even a set of steak knives. But I wanted to win it. I got 40 of the questions without having to look at the film at all. I then pulled out my VHS tape and ... Read more »
Matewan
Based on true events, as they say, but I looked into it a little and it seems reasonably accurate. There really was a gun battle between striking miners and so-called “detectives” from the Baldwin-Felts Agency in 1920. What a joke. B-F was a company that hired armed thugs to terrorize and even kill miners who wouldn’t fall into line with the coal barons. Flat-out murderers, usually backed ... Read more »