Movie Reviews
Freaks
Reviewing this one will be a little difficult. I don’t know if there is a generic and politically correct name for the people we used to call freaks. (Unusual people?) If I knew what it was I’d use it, but to save time I’m going to use the words we used when I was a lad, and assure you that I don’t mean anything nasty by it.
I’m old enough to remember freak shows at the Texas State ... Read more »
Hour of the Gun
The IMDb lists no fewer than 67 movies and TV shows that either feature Wyatt Earp, like My Darling Clementine, or have him as a minor character, such as Cheyenne Autumn. And all because of the melodramatic dime novels and penny dreadfuls about that that silly little dust-up in Tombstone, Arizona. I must have seen half a dozen examples ... Read more »
Point Blank
Point Blank (À bout portant) (2010) (France) The ordinary man thrust into events he doesn’t understand was a favorite theme of Alfred Hitchcock; the quintessential example is probably North by Northwest. This is a damn good example of the genre. Samuel is a nurse’s aide who unintentionally foils a murder attempt on one of his patients. Then he gets a call ... Read more »
Chasing Ice
Something of a hybrid movie here, part biography and part nature documentary. James Balog is a photographer who started something called the Extreme Ice Survey, which involved setting up time-lapse cameras in Greenland, Iceland, and Alaska to show the alarming retreat of the glaciers. His idea is that such dramatic footage would be a lot more effective in convincing the lay public that ... Read more »
The Manchurian Candidate
It is now the third day of the Republican National Clusterfuck. Again, no one has been killed, unlike the action that went down in Richard Condon’s fictitious convention of 1956, which saw the assassination of Senator John Iselin and his horrible wife by her brainwashed son. (Or as the jolly Chinese Communist monster Yen Lo put it, “dry-cleaned.”) There are Republicans who are actually ... Read more »
Medium Cool
As I write this, the second day of the RNC (the Republican National Clusterfuck) is getting under way in Cleveland. No one has been killed so far, at least not on the convention floor, but stick around. Ohio is an open carry state, and with so many angry, armed nuts about, things could get real interesting.
TCM was running a series of movies set at political conventions. We had ... Read more »
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (France, 1964) It’s all in French, and it’s all sung, every word of dialogue. I first saw this in 1966 and it had a profound effect on my life. I had just gone through a shattering emotional break-up, and was floundering around at Michigan State, not quite sure what to do with myself.
Then here comes this simple story of two ... Read more »
Utopia
This is the very last Laurel and Hardy movie, and a lot of it is pretty sad. Stan is looking tired, and in fact he was so sick he could only work about a half hour every day. He was diabetic, and developed colitis, dysentery, and a prostate ulcer. Ollie looks even worse. He has ballooned to a frightening weight, 330 pounds. There are some good gags, as always, particularly a scene where ... Read more »
Ghostbusters
With the all-female “reboot” opening just a few days ago, we figured we ought to take another look at this one to see how it holds up, and compare it to the new one, which we will see when the DVD is released. The reviews have been mixed, but I take that with a large grain of salt, since a lot of the howling came before anyone even saw it. And it came from the miserable fanboy types who ... Read more »
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
There is a strange little genre called “horror comedy” that is clearly not for everybody. But when they are done well, I really love them. Probably the best one I’ve seen is Shaun of the Dead. This one is almost that good.
It’s an ingenious concept. One of the popular tropes in real horror movies is the degenerate redneck or hillbilly who preys on college ... Read more »