Movie Reviews
The Night They Raided Minsky’s
I think a lot of people may not have seen or heard of this movie, but it’s one of my favorites. It was produced by Norman Lear and directed by William Friedkin, of all people. It was his first film with any budget at all, made three years before he hit it big with The French Connection. Since then he has mostly been known for hard-edged dramas such as Read more »
The War of the Roses
I sure wish Danny DeVito directed more movies. His ultra-black sense of humor and mine mesh perfectly. I adored Throw Momma From the Train. Not everyone liked Death to Smoochy, but I did. And his performances in movies like {Ruthless People}} are among the best comedy roles ever. And this is his masterpiece. I’m happy to say that it was ... Read more »
My Brilliant Career
Judy Davis was twenty-four when she appeared in this, her first starring role and only her second movie. She can’t really pull off playing a girl who was actually in her late teens, but it doesn’t really matter. She is great as the willful, passionate young woman living in the Australian bush. All you need to see is a 360˚ pan around the totally flat, treeless landscape to see why she ... Read more »
Wind
Carroll Ballard has directed just six films, and four of them are masterpieces: The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf, Fly Away Home, and this one. I had hopes that a fifth one, adapted from The Master, an almost unknown novel by T. H. White, author of The Once and Future King, would be a fifth masterpiece. I ... Read more »
Gunga Din
William Goldman, the great screenwriter, names this as his favorite film of all time. The title of his first novel, The Temple of Gold, came from this movie. There are others who say this is the best adventure movie ever made. I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s probably in my Top Twenty, if I ever made such a list. It was a huge production, the most expensive film ... Read more »
Flight of the Butterflies
The monarch butterflies of eastern and central North America do something that, to me, is one of the most amazing things in the animal kingdom. Every year as winter approaches they begin flying south and west from the United States and Canada, from places as distant as Nova Scotia, covering as much as eighty miles per day, riding the wind currents. Then they “return” … to a place they have ... Read more »
The Fox
This movie, based on a novella by D.H. Lawrence, was probably pretty revolutionary for its time, but it hasn’t fared all that well with time. Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood are lesbians (though I didn’t see all that much evidence of that) living on a rural farm. Keir Dullea shows up and says he is the grandson of the previous owner, has been away at sea for years and didn’t know the old man ... Read more »
The Crown
Bravo for Netflix! They have broken the mold of having continuing TV series appear once a week. They release them all at once, and I’m not the only one who has found that to be a big improvement on the standard model. It would not have worked well in the past, but the world of television has changed radically from the days of three networks plus PBS. Way back when, there were not long, ... Read more »
Doctor Foster
The discovery of a single long blonde hair leads Dr. Gemma Foster to begin spying on her husband. She thought she had the perfect marriage, but does she? That’s a question I was less and less interested in finding the answer to as the minutes went by. I didn’t like her, and if (as seems pretty certain) he really is cheating on her, I don’t like him, either. This is the kind of sordid story ... Read more »
The Mechanic
Jason Statham is a pretty decent action hero. His face is carved out of granite, and he only favors us with the tiniest of smiles, and those infrequently. He was one of three actors that Spider Robinson and I thought might have been much better in the part of Jack Reacher, the protagonist of the terrific books by Lee Child, than pipsqueak Tom Cruise. (The other two: Vin Diesel and Dwayne ... Read more »