Definitely Maybe

I have long contended that the way you tell a story can be as important as the story itself. One of my favorite examples is Forget Paris, where we follow the story of a couple’s relationship as it is told by a succession of his friends to a woman who doesn’t know them. If you had told it in a linear fashion, it would have been just your standard boy meets girl, ... Read more »

Déjà Vu

Time travel movies are tough, take it from somebody who wasted a large part of a decade trying to get one made. Science fiction films that really are science fiction, as opposed to comic book superheroes or space opera fantasy like Star Trek and Star Wars, is hard to sell, too, because you can count on critics who don’t understand it to ... Read more »

Deli Man

I have been fortunate enough to have eaten several times at the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue in New York, the place that was the setting for a tableful of Jewish comedians in Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose. The sandwiches there are big enough to require a forklift to get them to your mouth. In the L.A. area there are Nate and Al’s in Beverly Hills and ... Read more »

Delicatessen

Jean-Pierre Jeunet got his start in commercials and music videos, where visuals are everything. He made five films in about a decade, none of which got any distribution in the US, none of them available on DVD, and then he made this one, then City of Lost Children, then Amélie, then A Very Long Engagement. ... Read more »

Deliver Us From Evil

I’d better warn you. This is going to get nasty. If you are a Catholic who believes the church hierarchy is somehow above you, better than you are (which is what they believe, it’s doctrine; look it up!), then I’m giving you an especially strong warning. Get out of here while you can, before I insult everything you ... Read more »

Deliverance

Most of us around my age remember the shock of seeing this picture for the first time. There were things in here we just weren’t used to seeing, like homosexual rape. Graphic rape of any kind was not something we were used to seeing, for that matter. And this was about as graphic as you could get. I hadn’t realized that this was Ned Beatty’s first movie role. It ... Read more »

The Demi-Paradise

One of those morale builders of this era. Remember, the Soviets were our allies until after the war. Here we see Lawrence Olivier as a Russian engineer traveling to England to get a new ship’s propeller he has designed made by British shipbuilders. This is just months before the war begins.

You’ll be reminded of Ninotchka, except that Greta Garbo was the ... Read more »

Demolition

We have here a nice, if rather dark, “meet cute” premise. Jake Gyllenhaal has just lost his wife in a car accident that has left him without a scratch. In the hospital he tries to buy a package of candy from one of those vending machines with the spiral racks. The spiral turns, and the candy fails to drop. For some reason he fixates on this, and begins writing a series of sort of ... Read more »

Demolition Man

Every once in a great while a movie really, really surprises me. The only reason I watched this was that I was in the mood for a little brainless action. And I got it … but right in the middle of all that noise and flash something unexpected broke out: About two-thirds of a really good movie!

It’s the distant future of 1996, and Sylvester Stallone is one of those cops who goes ... Read more »

Denial

In 1993 Deborah Lipstadt published a book titled Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. In it, she accused well-known racist, anti-Semitic, fucking Nazi holocaust denier, liar, and all-around piece of human garbage David Irving of being a racist, anti-Semitic, fucking Nazi holocaust denier, liar, and all-around piece of human garbage. So ... Read more »