Movie Reviews
City of Gold
I wish I had been aware of Jonathan Gold’s restaurant reviews while we were living in Los Angeles. He has written for the alternative newspaper LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Times, where he currently resides, as well as contributing to such varied venues as Gourmet, Rolling Stone (where he wrote music ... Read more »
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Before Michael Bay and his big CGI extravaganzas, there was David Lean, the master of the sweeping epic with little or no special effects. He also directed Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. This is one of the all-time great movies. But first I need to get to the history …
I could wish that the author of the book, Pierre ... Read more »
Night and Day
Of all the fabricated Hollywood “biopics” I have ever seen, this just may be the worst. And that’s setting the bar pretty high. That’s not even counting that the story totally ignores one of the central facts of Cole Porter’s life: His homosexuality. I don’t fault the writers for that, I understand that there was no way at all that they could even hint at that. But just take a look at the ... Read more »
Cop Rock
I think the problem was that the world was just not ready for Cop Rock in 1990. A gritty police drama, produced by Steven Bochco, where the cops and politicians and judges and jurors and crack dealers suddenly burst into song? The reviews were terrible. The audience never happened. It is on some lists of the worst TV series of all time. I feel pretty strongly ... Read more »
Stalker
If you ever suffer from a bout of insomnia I have a sure cure for it. Just start playing this movie and you are bound to snooze like a baby. I never fall asleep while watching a movie, but I felt myself nodding off several times during this one. It is the most soporific, most boring, least interesting, most deliberately obscure movie I have seen in a long time, ... Read more »
Special Correspondents
Ricky Gervais’s brand of humor is not for everyone, but I’ve loved him since I watched the original, British version of The Office, which was vastly superior to the American copy. The Invention of Lying is one of my all-time favorite comedies. This one is not quite on that level, but it’s pretty funny. ... Read more »
Look Who’s Back (Er ist wieder da)
Am I just seeing special lessons to be learned in a lot of films lately because of the disaster of the recent election? It’s possible, but this one is genuinely disturbing. It is based on a “satirical” novel that was very popular in Germany. The premise: Adolf Hitler is somehow transported through time, alive, to present-day Germany.
If you’ve got your breath back now, let me say ... Read more »
Risky Business
That old myth of the whore with the heart of gold is a durable one. Maybe because men like to believe they have the power to turn these woman away from a life of crime and degradation? I dunno, but just look at it. There was Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. (Okay, she was a madam, since she owned the Long Branch, but you don’t get to be a madam without working your way ... Read more »
The Quiet Man
Though John Ford is best known for his classic westerns, he did other stuff, too. He made The Informer, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and Mister Roberts. He won the Best Director Oscar four times, which is a record that will probably never be broken. The Quiet Man is a movie ... Read more »
The Ipcress File
Harry Palmer is sort of the anti-Bond of spy movies. Harry is a regular bloke who wouldn’t be in the game at all except for criminal charges that could be brought against him if he refuses. We see him doing the sort of thing that Bond, James Bond, would never do, like make coffee in the morning, shop for groceries, and feed parking meters. He’s almost blind without his glasses. He can ... Read more »