Movie Reviews
Titles starting with E
Enough Said
James Gandolfini’s next-to-last film. He meets Julia Louis-Dreyfus at a party. They go out together and, to her surprise, she likes this big bear of a man. She is an upper-class masseuse, going house to house to get the kinks out of her clients. One of them is Catherine Keener, who she becomes friends with. One of the things they talk about is Keener’s ex-husband from hell. Keener has ... Read more »
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
What a coincidence. This week “Kenny Boy” Lay and Jeffrey Skilling went on trial in Houston, and Lee and I watched this video, which at least gives me some idea of what the hell they were doing. That they were and are scum, that they cheated, lied, bribed, stole, and fucked old ladies and poor children is a given in my mind; what I wasn’t too sure of was Read more »
Enter Laughing
Based on a book and stage play by Carl Reiner, about his early days and entry into show business. He’s utterly hopeless at first, and Jose Ferrer misses no opportunity to tell him so, with scathing wit. Reiner is played by Reni Santoni, who does a pretty good job of showing that stage fright can be an almost fatal condition. They are supported nicely by the great Elaine May and the always ... Read more »
Enter Laughing
Based on a book and stage play by Carl Reiner, about his early days and entry into show business. He’s utterly hopeless at first, and Jose Ferrer misses no opportunity to tell him so, with scathing wit. Reiner is played by Reni Santoni, who does a pretty good job of showing that stage fright can be an almost fatal condition. They are supported nicely by the great Elaine May and the always ... Read more »
The Entertainer
Tony Richardson was one of the hot young British directors in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. He made one of my all-time favorite movies, Tom Jones, among many others. This is from a play by John Osborne and stars the great Lord Olivier as Archie Rice, who is usually described as an aging vaudevillian at the tail end of the age of vaudeville, but to my mind the ... Read more »
Envy
The reviews of this one were so abysmal that we’d never have rented it if we weren’t subscribing to the Hollywood Video MVP program, where you get unlimited rentals for $10/month. If it sucks, you’ve only wasted the 30 minutes or so it take to decide it’s a turkey. (Movie freaks, check that one out!) So we were surprised to be laughing. Jack Black makes a spray that makes dog shit vanish. ... Read more »
The Equalizer
Inspired by the 1985 TV series starring Edward Woodward. I remember watching it, and recall it as pretty good. The premise: He was a guy you went to when you were facing bad guys you couldn’t handle. He would equalize the playing field … or, actually, since he was so good, he would gain the advantage. This is the same deal, a sort of origin story, where he came from and what got him into ... Read more »
Equalizer 2
I’m always a little embarrassed to review a film like this, which I have to call a guilty pleasure. I guess it began way back with Death Wish, a “super-violent” film that looks pretty tame and quaint these days. People like to deplore these films, and they will get no argument from me. They are dreadful, ugly, blood-soaked exercises in vigilante violence. And, in ... Read more »
Escape From Planet Earth
I knew it was bound to happen. A few months ago I was in the hospital having my left knee replaced. It hurt quite a bit … unless I popped an oxycontin every hour on the hour. There wasn’t much to do there except watch the extremely limited selection of movies playing on a blurry little lo-def TV screen, so I did that. And I must have been even more loaded than I thought because, though I ... Read more »
Escape From Planet Earth
I knew it was bound to happen. A few months ago I was in the hospital having my left knee replaced. It hurt quite a bit … unless I popped an oxycontin every hour on the hour. There wasn’t much to do there except watch the extremely limited selection of movies playing on a blurry little lo-def TV screen, so I did that. And I must have been even more loaded than I thought because, though I ... Read more »