Movie Reviews
Titles starting with E
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Just what I’ve come to expect from Charlie Kaufman, that is, a mind-stretching exercise in fractured reality. This is even better than Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in The Chicago Reader: “Only once in a blue moon does a screenwriter who isn’t a director become known as an ... Read more »
Europa Europa
Europa, Europa (Germany/France/Poland, 1990) You have to be reminded of The Pianist, the 2002 film by Roman Polanski. That was the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who, with a great deal of dumb luck, managed to survive the Holocaust without ever being sent to an extermination camp, largely by living like a cockroach in the walls and crawlspaces, to ... Read more »
Europa Report
I had never heard of this, and it fills me with fear that I might have somehow missed it. It basically never got a theatrical release, and is relying on home “On Demand” downloads to make back its small budget. IMDb doesn’t say just how small that budget was, but for whatever they spent they were able to obtain results in the space scenes that rival those in Read more »
Evan Almighty
As is usually the case with a movie I’ve seen only once, I’m a little vague on the details about Bruce Almighty, the predecessor to this movie. As I recall, Jim Carrey wished he was God, and God took him up on the offer. God took a vacation, and left Carrey in charge. Chaos ensued. What I remember clearly, though, is that the movie was fun. Fun from beginning to ... Read more »
Evelyn
There is now an entire genre of movies detailing the horrors of the Catholic church and the Catholic-influenced legal system in Ireland. This one describes a man’s struggle to get custody of his daughter and it is okay, with Pierce Brosnan trying hard to stretch himself beyond Bond, James Bond. But a better one is The Magdalene Sisters, which will absolutely ... Read more »
Everest
Anyone who tries to climb Mount Everest is, by definition, an idiot. (Except for Sherpas. For them, it’s a living.) I mean, once Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made it to the top and back, what is the fucking point? Every conquest after that is just another fucking idiot on the top. Human beings were not designed to live at 29,000 feet. The things that can go wrong, short of death, ... Read more »
Everlasting Moments
We follow a mother of five … no, wait, make that six … no wait, here’s another … well, the mother of a large and growing family, married to an abusive drunk, from 1907 to about 1920. They are very poor, but she has a camera she won in a lottery. She is befriended by the man in the photo shop where she goes to buy film, paper, developer, and other items needed by photographers in those days ... Read more »
Every Little Step
A Chorus Line opened on Broadway in 1975, played 6,137 performances at the Shubert Theater (where I saw it about a year into the run) and has been playing continuously somewhere on the planet ever since. To say it was revolutionary is quite an understatement. Musicals up until then relied on cheery songs, lots of scenery and spectacle. A ... Read more »
Everyone Says I Love You
I just purely do adore this movie. The critics liked it, too, but audiences in the US didn’t. It was not a flop, but it was a box office disappointment.
Woody Allen has made movies in just about every genre you can think of, except westerns (and I’d pay good money to see a Woody Allen western), war movies, and superhero cartoon idiocy. This was his only shot at a musical. And he ... Read more »
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask
This was one of those inexplicable best-sellers, a book that for some reason, everybody had to have. I haven’t read it. There’s nothing I was afraid to ask, and not much I didn’t know. Seems Woody got pissed when he saw the author, David Ruben, when someone asked him if sex was dirty. He replied “It is if you’re doing it right.” That’s a line he stole from Take the ... Read more »