Movie Reviews
Slither
No, not the 1973 Slither, a seriously weird and delightful film starring James Caan and Sally Kellerman. This is yet another of several “horror comedies” we have seen lately. I have no idea why the 1973 film was called that, it’s one of the mysteries. It is clear why this one was so titled. It’s the slimiest movie I’ve seen since Read more »
Let the Right One In
Say you’re a twelve-year-old boy in frigid Sweden, and you’re falling for a weird twelve-year-old girl who has just moved in next door … only she has been twelve for a long time, as she puts it. She can also climb a seven-story building as fast as she could run on flat ground, snap a man’s neck like a dry twig, and can’t enter a room unless you invite her in. In short, she is a ... Read more »
The 33
You probably remember the international story of the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for 69 days, and the massive effort to rescue them. This movie attempts to show us just how hard it was to be down there, and just how resourceful the engineers aboveground had to be to drill those holes, one of them big enough to lower a man-sized cage (luckily, there were no fat men!) down to ... Read more »
London Suite
(TV movie) Neil Simon. America’s wittiest living playwright, no question, and one of the funniest of all time. Barefoot in the Park. The Sunshine Boys. Last of the Red Hot Lovers. The Goodbye Girl. Biloxi Blues. And the two that preceded this: Plaza Suite, in New York, California Suite, at the Beverly Hills ... Read more »
Popeye
Saw a copy of this at Goodwill for $2.99. Thought, written by Jules Feiffer, directed by Robert Altman, starring Robin Williams. Could it possibly be as bad as I remembered?
Well … yes. That bad. And it’s funny, because the individual elements are very, very good, with two exceptions. The songs, by Harry Nilsson, almost universally suck. (I did think “Large,” which Shelley Duvall ... Read more »
Life Story
David Attenborough is by far the dominant force in nature documentaries, and has been for decades. He is getting up there in years, looking a bit older, and his brother Richard died a few years back. So I keep expecting to hear some bad news about him, such as that he’s retiring or, worse, dead. But he keeps soldiering on, happily, though he no longer puts himself into the frame as often ... Read more »
Ghostbusters
Is there something strange in your neighborhood? It’s probably the all-female remake of Ghostbusters. If you are a pathetic fanboy terrified that your penis might be on the small side, this has probably upset you a great deal. You feel like you’re getting slimed, right? So you have lashed out at it, just as you did at women playing online games, and the growing ... Read more »
Eight Legged Freaks
Here’s another entry, along with a movie called Tucker and Dale vs. Evil that we just saw, in the rather small and specialized genre known as horror comedies. That one satirized the college-students-terrorized-and-slaughtered-by-inbred-hillbilly-psychopath movies. The best example of a horror comedy that I can think of is Shaun of the ... Read more »
The Secret Life of Pets
It got off to a good start, showing pets who actually behaved like real animals. A nice example: The dog in the window across the street asks Max, the main character, what he will be doing today. He replies that he figured he would stand at the front door and stare at it until his owner came home. Sounds like a good plan, says the other dog. That’s cute. Also, dogs are fundamentally unable ... Read more »
99 Homes
Wouldn’t it be swell if all the people the sheriff’s office has to evict were deadbeat scumbags who never intended to make house payments, or were cooking meth in the garage? People who you would be happy to see their miserable possessions—favorite bong, extra T-shirt, motorcycle parts, filthy mattress—stacked at the curb. Unfortunately, getting behind on your payments happens to decent ... Read more »