Movie Reviews
Titles starting with M
The Man On the Train
An entrancing and mysterious French film starring a guy named Johnny Hallyday, who apparently is a rock and roll legend over there. He looks a bit like a world-weary Elvis, though lots smarter. Plot is hard to describe, but I liked it.
The Man Who Invented Christmas
Here’s one that sounded a lot better to me than it actually proved to be. Charles Dickens is in debt, and is badly blocked. His “Christmas ghost story” is not going well, and he needs a hit, because the man who is celebrated like a rock star for writing Oliver Twist has had three flops in a row and he needs the money. So he engages in imaginary conversations with ... Read more »
The Man Who Knew Infinity
Dev Patel, who got a terrific break with his first film, Slumdog Millionaire, plays Srinivasa Ramanujan, the most brilliant man you have probably never heard of. He grew up in India with very little formal education, certainly none in higher mathematics. But he was a natural genius who made almost unbelievable contributions to the field known as identities ... Read more »
The Man Who Knew Too Much
It’s a good story, but I’ve never quite figured out why Hitchcock wanted to make it twice. Did he think the title was The Man Who Knew Two Much? Anyway, he retained only the basic story of a man who was given a secret from a dying spy, then was unable to tell anyone about it because his daughter (in the remake, a pain-in-the-ass son) was kidnapped to threaten ... Read more »
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alfred Hitchcock liked this story so much he made it twice. The second time was in 1956 with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day, in VistaVision and Technicolor. Both versions have their strengths, but this is the better one. And when you add it all up, the reason this is weak is Doris, and the silly song she sings. Once I hear that goddam “Que Sera, Sera,” I can’t get it out of my head for the ... Read more »
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
What a cast! Scroll on past the marquee names of Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, and Lee Marvin, and you will find that this features … well, everybody! Just about everybody who ever played a supporting role in a classic western movie, anyway. Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Jeannette Nolan, John “Yumpin’ Yimini’!” Qualen, Woody Strode, Denver ... Read more »
The Man Who Wasn’t There
So here’s the Coen Brothers take on a ‘40s film noir. And what a sight it is to see. It’s in glorious black and white, of course, and in many shots it might as well have been filmed in 1949, when it is set. They go so far as to deliberately make the scenes in cars look phony, like they did back then, with the exterior obviously a back projection. The set design is perfect. Though I was ... Read more »
The Man Who Would Be King
At my very first meeting on my very first trip to Hollywood to talk about turning my short story “Air Raid” into a movie—at the Polo Lounge in the big pink Beverly Hills Hotel—I met three formidable people. I was intimidated. (Big time. Dustin Hoffman was at the next table.) One was Doug Trumbull, the SFX wizard behind 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The next was ... Read more »
Man With a Million
From a story by Mark Twain. Gregory Peck is a down-on-his-luck American in London without a farthing. Two rich brothers make a bet. They persuade the Bank of England to issue a one million pound note. One brother says that with such a thing, he won’t need to spend anything. People will be so eager to have his business they will shower goods and services on him, gratis, or bill him for ... Read more »
The Man With the Golden Arm
This is one of those groundbreaking films. When it was released, the MPAA would not give it a seal of approval, because it dealt with drug addiction. It had been sort of okay to portray a drug addict as a pitiful, twitching, wild-eyed maniac desperate for a fix … like a puff of the killer weed, for instance, as in Reefer Madness. But to show that an addict could ... Read more »