Movie Reviews
45 Years
One thing you know going into a movie starring Tom Courtenay (age 79) and Charlotte Rampling (70) is that you are going to see some seriously good acting. I remember him for his fantastic performance in Billy Liar, his third film. And she amazed and startled us all with her brave S&M performance opposite Dirk Bogarde in The Damned. ... Read more »
The Birdcage
Remaking a foreign language film in English is not always a bad idea. However, just off the top of my head I can think of only one remake that was as good as, and possibly even a wee bit better, than the original, and that is Sorcerer, the English version of the French film The Wages of Fear. More often the ... Read more »
La Cage aux Folles
Once when I was in the Big Apple I noticed that someone had made a musical out of this. (It was Harvey Fierstein.) I really wanted to go see it, but I didn’t have the time. Oh, well.
Some years ago I rented the VHS tape, got it home, popped it in the VCR, and found out it had been dubbed. Dubbed!! I will never watch a dubbed ... Read more »
Lilith
Here we have Warren Beatty, Kim Hunter, Peter Fonda, and Jean Seberg in a story about a young man who comes to work in a nuthouse for very rich nuts. He is unaware of how manipulative crazy people can be, and falls for Seberg in a big way. You can tell it is going to end in grief. This movie was ground-breaking in some ways, addressing mental illness and even hinting at lesbianism. But it ... Read more »
Venus
Premiere magazine ran a list of the Top 100 movie performances of all time, and Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence came in #1. I can think of a few other contenders, but I wouldn’t argue very hard against him. And it was his very first role! We had just seen him in Lawrence of Arabia, and I looked into him a bit and found he held the ... Read more »
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
This is my personal favorite of the Frank Capra “capracorn” movies. That’s not a term invented in today’s more cynical age, but goes all the way back in the ‘40s, when people were much more open to his brand of open sentiment and patriotism than they are today. I guess some people just aren’t happy with a story unless it has a lot of killing and hatred and the bad people win. I’m aware ... Read more »
Farewell, My Lovely
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe has appeared in ten movies and many TV and radio adaptations. The movies range in quality from very good (Bogart in The Big Sleep) to pretty bad (Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet, which was really this story, re-titled), to plain bizarre (The Lady in the Lake, shot entirely in ... Read more »
Hair
I can’t say that I’m 100% opposed to making changes in a musical when it moves from the stage to the silver screen. Two of my favorite movie musicals of all time were changed deeply and fundamentally in translation. Bob Fosse’s Cabaret made huge changes to the stage version, and Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend did, too. I love them all, ... Read more »
Mr. Right
Sam Rockwell is a strange hit man, and Anna Kendrick is the girl he falls in love with. But it’s a little more complicated than that …
I went back and forth on this one. After the first thirty minutes I was ready to eject it, the meet cute dialogue getting a little thick for me. But then it is revealed that the reason he is so awesomely good at what he does is that he has some sort ... Read more »
Lawrence of Arabia
I vividly remember seeing this in a theater in Beaumont, Texas, when it first came out. Roadshow engagement! Reserved seats! Intro music, Intermission music, Exit music! Only two showings per day! Higher ticket price! And it was glorious, just glorious, and worth every penny. That was the same year I saw How the West Was Won at the Cinerama Theater in Houston, ... Read more »