Movie Reviews
Hail Caesar!
When I hear that the mighty Coen Brothers have made a comedy, I don’t go into the theater expecting to see pratfalls and hear scatological jokes as in so many comedies these days. I expect witty writing, funny situations, wry satire. That’s exactly what I got in this one. It’s all about the last days of the studio system in the early 1950s, when every studio had a “fixer” whose job was to ... Read more »
Freeheld
In New Jersey, what most of the country would call the County Commission is known as the Board of Chosen Freeholders. I assume they used to have to be land holders, but now anybody can run. Each county has its own rules, and its own number of freeholders, up to nine of them.
In Ocean County it is five. And in 2005 they turned down the application of Laurel Hester (played by Julianne ... Read more »
The Godfather Epic
In the beginning, 1972, there was The Godfather. It woneth the Academy Award for Best Picture. And Francis Ford Coppola and the critics and audiences saw that it was good. Then in 1974 Coppola created The Godfather, Part II, and behold, it also won the Oscar and was applauded by one and all. And then created he The ... Read more »
Chi-Raq
The ancient Greek Aristophanes wrote a play titled Lysistrata, about women who denied sex to their men until they stopped the endless Peloponnesian War. Spike Lee used this story and transported it to Chicago’s South Side, with rival gangs subbing for the Greek armies. Not only that, but he preserved the idea of having most of it performed in verse, though it is ... Read more »
Minions
Redbox didn’t have Goosebumps, so we rented this. It’s a prequel about those little yellow fireplugs who got most of the laughs in the Despicable Me movies. They are trying to find a villainous master to lead them, in 1968. The best thing about the movie is the music, but that’s because it’s by artists like the Beatles, the Rolling ... Read more »
The (Dead Mothers) Club
This purported to be an exploration of what it is like to lose your mother when you are young. The headliners are Jane Fonda, Rosie O’Donnell, and Molly Shannon. Fonda’s mother slit her own throat when Jane was twelve. When Rosie was eleven her mother died of breast cancer. Shannon’s family was in a terrible car wreck when she was four. Her mother, younger sister, and cousin were killed. ... Read more »
Bob Roberts
This is an interesting movie to watch again in this incredible Age of Trump. Not that Tim Robbins (who wrote, directed, and starred) really resembles the bloviating blowhard with the bad hair. Their styles are very different. Bob is self-effacing, modest, quiet. But it’s the phenomenon of the “outsider,” the man who isn’t a politician and attracts a truly fanatical following.
Bob ... Read more »
A Brilliant Young Mind
Is it gross and insensitive of me to say that I’m pretty tired of movies about autistic geniuses? It just seems there have been a lot of them since Rain Man, (which was about a savant, not a genius). We classify autism these days as a spectrum, with people like this boy in this movie on one end, which we call “Asperger’s Syndrome,” and really means just mild ... Read more »
Six By Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim has never been one to hide himself away and make people wonder what he is like. There are many interviews with him that the filmmakers used here, stretching all the way back to his early career, in venues like The Mike Douglas Show. And boy, the man can talk. He is articulate, thoughtful, erudite, insightful, a perfect interview subject. There is ... Read more »
Mr. Holmes
Somebody, somewhere, must be keeping an account of just how many times in books and movies there have been outside-the-canon stories of old Sherlock. There have several of them lately, one series starring Robert Downey, Jr. (which I hated) and another on TV with Benedict Slumbercrutch (or whatever his name is) and Martin Freeman, which I love, except for the recent one-off. Back in 1985 ... Read more »