Before I Go To Sleep

Before I Go to Sleep (2014) (USA, UK, France, Sweden) Well, damn it! This is the second time someone has stolen my idea! I wrote a short story titled Just Another Perfect Day, that involved a man who lost all his memories every time he went to sleep. He started from scratch each morning. Then a few years later there came what may be ... Read more »

Before Midnight

Possibly the final installment of the brilliant series of films that began with Before Sunrise (1995) and continued nine years later with Before Sunset (2004) … but there’s nothing except fatal accident or illness or disinterest on the part of one of the creators to prevent there being a fourth movie in another nine years.

In ... Read more »

Before Sunrise

Wow. A really different movie doesn’t come along that often. This is one. At first glance it might not seem it. Boy meets girl … and we’re already off to a clichéd start, right? But then, boy and girl spend the night walking and talking through Vienna, and that’s all the movie is about. No phony action, no lurid sex. Just conversation. They are very young (from my perspective), and ... Read more »

Before Sunset

It’s even better. The budget is listed as $10 million at the IMDb, and I can’t believe that. The budget for Before Sunrise was $2.5 million, and this is simpler and shorter and has only a few locations and a small crew. Inflation, or star salaries? Whatever … it was developed by Linklater, the director, and by Hawke and Delpy, rehearsed for two weeks, and ... Read more »

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

I’m currently reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark (actually Donald Westlake, one of my all-time favorite writers). His character, Parker, is always getting tripped up by dealing with amateurs at the heist business. This is the story of a heist planned by two brothers with no experience but a desperate need for money. How desperate? They decide to rob their own ... Read more »

Begin Again

The problem in a film like this is the music. We travel along with a singer/songwriter as she is discovered, developed, and begins to have some success. To really enjoy the movie then, it seems to me, we need to think she is really, really good. But good to you might not be good to me. So … do you like Joni Mitchell, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Nikki Minaj, Ani DiFranco? (Feel free ... Read more »

The Beginning or the End

Here’s an interesting bit of history. It’s an early docudrama concerning the creation of the first atomic bomb. All the actors portray real people, such as Hume Cronyn as Robert Oppenheimer, the conscience of Los Alamos, and Brian Donlevy as General Leslie Groves, the man who was probably most responsible to pushing the Manhattan Project to completion. The details of the bomb itself were ... Read more »

The Beguiled

I never saw the 1971 Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman movie this was based on. And I’m not sure just why Sophia Coppola wanted to remake it. It’s a good enough story, but did it need to be made twice? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll look up the original.

It’s got a terrific cast. Nicole Kidman is the headmistress of a school for young ladies in the closing year of the ... Read more »

Behind the Candelabra

Up until about when I was in the third grade my family didn’t have a television. Most of the TV I saw was when we visited my grandparents in Corsicana, Texas, and naturally most of that was the things Granddaddy wanted to see. The ones I remember are The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, which was mostly boxing, and The Ed Sullivan Show. ... Read more »

Being John Malkovich

Until Adaptation came along, this movie was in a class by itself. Now there is a genre to itself: Charlie Kaufman movies. And I am a big fan. In only half a dozen movies he has established himself as the most exciting writer working in Hollywood today. I am looking forward to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless ... Read more »