The Alienist

Taken from a best-selling book by Caleb Carr which I haven’t read but which Lee enjoyed. It is a ten-episode series from TNT. It is 1896 in New York City. Before there were psychiatrists as such, people who studied the make-up of the mind were known as alienists. The story here is the quest by the fictional Dr. Laszlo Kreizler to track down a serial killer who is maiming poor street ... Read more »

Aliens

Aliens (1986) I didn’t recall that this movie ran a bit over two and a half hours the first time I saw it. There’s a reason for that. It didn’t. What I have on my DVD is the Special Edition, or director’s cut, I guess, that adds seventeen minutes. Reading about what was added, I think it was a good idea, as the new scenes have mostly to do with Ripley’s character development.

I ... Read more »

Aliens in the Attic

We’re all familiar with the genre of kid movies where the kids repel some threat in spite of the cluelessness of their parents. I find I tolerate them less and less as I grow older. As I turn into a grumpy old man. Here, it actually makes a sort of sense, as the invading aliens have a gizmo that enables them to animate a person like a remote control puppet … but it only works on grown-ups. ... Read more »

All About Eve

This movie consistently makes the Top 100 lists, and is often in the Top 10. It was nominated for 14 Oscars, a total never beaten and only matched by Titanic, 47 years later. It won six, probably would have won seven if the two female leads hadn’t split the vote. It is wonderfully written, and very well acted by Read more »

All Is Lost

I still haven’t seen most of the Oscar-nominated movies this year, but I feel that 2013 is an exceptional year if only for this film and one other: Gravity. Why? Because they are both different. Different from the depressing sameness of most movies these days. (I’m talking about the big blockbusters; they are still making smaller, more thoughtful movies, too, I ... Read more »

All of Me

Carl Reiner directed Steve Martin in four films in a row: The Jerk, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Read more »

All Quiet on the Western Front

There had been anti-war films before, but nothing remotely on this scale. And there had never been one nearly as bleak as this. Not a single frame in this movie makes war seem the tiniest bit fun, glamorous, exciting, heroic, or even patriotic. No, this movie correctly portrays war as the terrifying, horrifying, gut-spilling, miserable, screaming-in-agony-and-terror atrocity that it is. ... Read more »

All the King’s Men

I had completely forgotten that I had a copy of this … on LaserDisc, of all things! (Remember those? They were wonderful! Also doomed, alas, but for a few years there I had better picture and sound quality than anybody I knew.) There’s really not much point in reviewing this version, though. Just scroll down to the review ... Read more »

All the King’s Men

I read the book in college, and remember very little of it. I saw the 1949 version with Broderick Crawford, and was greatly impressed. My understanding of this version is that Steven Zaillian (who has some very ... Read more »