Movie Reviews
Of Mice and Men
I guess we all have gaps in our experience, and even a guy who has seen as many movies as I have is bound to have missed a few classics. Somehow I had never seen the original, nor had I read the book. I had seen a few clips of George and Lennie talking about the rabbits, but I didn’t know how it ended. Thus I was stunned when George put a bullet through Lennie’s head. I mean, I Read more »
Scarface
Now that Dennis Hopper is dead, the undisputed title of largest amount of scenery chewed in a single movie belongs to Al Pacino. One also tries to think of a movie that has more over-the-top scenes, and nothing comes to me immediately. I admit I haven’t see the last twenty or so super-team movies, you know, X-Men, Justice League, Suicide Squad, Captain America, ... Read more »
Poltergeist
When I TiVoed this I thought I was getting the original 1982 film. Maybe it was because the description mentioned Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams. Somebody at DirecTV screwed up. I hadn’t been aware that there was a remake. Hell, I hadn’t even been aware that there had been two not-well-reviewed sequels. Oh, well, might as well look at it.
Naturally the special effects are much ... Read more »
Sea of Love
I tell you, by the time this was over I was pretty sick of hearing that song. The plot is that some crazed killer is shooting naked guys in their beds, and he leaves a “Sea of Love” platter spinning on the Victrola. Al Pacino is an alcoholic cop, and quite an asshole. He’s one of those guys who drives his wife to divorce, and then won’t let her go, tormenting her and her new husband with ... Read more »
Speed
… is simply one of the best balls-to-the-wall pedal-to-the-metal (literally!) action thrillers ever made. Even the title is perfect. What an insane idea! A honkin’ big old city bus that can’t go below 50 mph without blowing up! If I had been a studio exec in 1993 all I would have needed was to hear that sentence and I’d reach for my checkbook. The stunt work was ... Read more »
Sudden Fear
I’ll admit to some prejudice here: I find Joan Crawford and Jack Palance to be two of the least appealing movie stars in classic Hollywood. It’s easy to see why someone might dislike Palance. He played some of the nastiest, scariest roles ever, including the one here. He might have been a perfectly nice guy in real life. I really don’t know. For some reason I never liked Crawford at all, ... Read more »
Don’t Breathe
We are in Detroit (the movie was actually shot mostly in Hungary!) in one of those blighted neighborhoods where all the houses for blocks around are empty. The windows are blown out and scorch marks climb the walls from previous Devil’s Nights (a Detroit institution where Detroit residents demonstrate their love of their city by trying to burn it down every October 30th, the night before ... Read more »
Red River
There was never any real competition for the best western star of all time. There was John Wayne, and there was everybody else. He made a lot of potboilers early in his career, before he became a real star, but after that I can’t think of a really bad one. Many of the ones he made with John Ford are classics, some of the best movies ever made in any genre.
This was actually filmed ... Read more »
The Player
Robert Altman made quite a few movies that could qualify as masterpieces (and a few duds, like everyone does), and this is one of the best of them. There have been quite a few movies made about Hollywood and the movie business, too, most of them at least a little satirical, and I can’t think of any one of them that was as good as this one.
The plot: Someone is sending death threats ... Read more »
Emma
Did you know that Marie Dressler was the top money-making star in 1932 and 1933? Eat your heart out, Greta Garbo! Did you know Wallace Beery was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in 1932? Eat your heart out, Clark Gable! This unlikely couple (by today’s standards) were wildly popular. They co-starred in Min and Bill, a terrific little ... Read more »