Them!

Here is one of the better “Giant Mutated Radioactive Insect!” movies of that crazy age. It was actually the first “big bug!” film. If this seems like damning with faint praise, it’s not, really. I sort of dug a lot of them when they were new, and still like some of them. People of today will sneer at the big ants, but they are actually done pretty well, and let me tell you, when I saw this ... Read more »

Them Thar Hills

Laurel and Hardy Two-reeler. Ollie has gout. Well, serves you right, you bonehead, for eating all that rich food! says Dr. Billie Gilbert. He advises a rest cure in the mountains, drinking plenty of water. What they don’t know as they pull up in their ‘30s RV (a box like a large packing crate on wheels) is that a bunch of moonshiners have dumped their hooch in the well. They get jolly ... Read more »

Theodora Goes Wild

Nice little screwball comedy. This was the first comic role for Irene Dunne, and she turned out to be so good at it that she did a lot of them later on. It seemed to be an article of faith in these movies that the way to a woman’s heart was to be as obnoxious as possible. Melvyn Douglas is so grating, in fact, that I thought if he’d whistled “The Farmer in the Dell” (and what grown-up ... Read more »

The Theory of Everything

Well, we’ve now seen all five of the nominees for Best Actor, 2014, and it’s official: Michael Keaton got robbed.

He was the victim of a well-known quirk of Academy voters. They seem to believe that it’s harder to contort yourself into a pretzel, to show obvious suffering, than it is to do a straight role. It can be summed up as, “When in doubt, vote for ... Read more »

There Will Be Blood

One of the worst titles ever, in my opinion. Even worse than Sorcerer. (That was the name of one of the trucks, fer cryin’ out loud, and you had maybe a 2-second oblique glimpse of that twice in the movie, if you look hard.)

Every once in a while a film comes along that gets almost universal praise, and when I see it, I can’t figure out why. There are two ... Read more »

There’s Something About Mary

This immediately joined my short list of movies that were not only very funny, but broke new ground about what a comedy could be. A few of these are Airplane!, Annie Hall, and Blazing Saddles. It was the breakout point for the careers of Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz. The Farrelly Brothers had had a big hit ... Read more »

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

Boy, did I ever have a crush on Elke Sommer when I was in high school. It was that face, sweet and sexy at the same time. And, yes, that bouffant hair. All the girls were wearing it that way, poor things. It was the berries. Starting with her nude scene in The Victors (and damn it, when is that going to come out on video?) and going on to A ... Read more »

They Drive By Night

If this movie was a truck, it would be weaving back and forth across the yellow line, skidding on ice, doing a 180, and tipping over on 9 wheels as George Raft slept soundly back behind the cab. In other words, it’s all over the place.

It starts off well, being about independent truck drivers and the hardships they face. I was immediately struck by how much things have changed, and ... Read more »

They Might Be Giants

This was not available for a long time. It’s possible to buy it now at Amazon for $135 new or $90 used! Wow. You must really love it to pay that price. I do love it but luckily it’s also available streaming on Netflix. So we just saw it for the first time since it was new. It holds up very well. Both George C. Scott as a man who was emotionally shattered and now believes he is Sherlock ... Read more »

They Shall Not Grow Old

Peter Jackson’s grandfather served in the Great War, the one we now call World War I. This led to a fascination with the war. He became a collector, with a huge wardrobe of uniforms, an arsenal of rifles, and heaps of other paraphernalia. And, being Peter Jackson, a very rich man from having directed six Tolkien movies, he has actual military vehicles and artillery pieces. If anyone wanted ... Read more »