Hiroshima

I’ve never seen a docudrama quite like this one, but I’d like to see more. It blends both black and white and rare color film from the World War II archives with staged material almost seamlessly. It tells the story not of the making of the Bomb, which I’ve seen many times before in films like Fat Man and Little Boy and many straight documentaries, but the story ... Read more »

A History of Britain

Our tour guide in this series, one Simon Schama, is not known to me, though he’s apparently written a number of popularized history books and is well-known on the BBC. He insisted it be called “A” History of Britain, not “The,” and that was wise of him. Though it runs 18 hours, you can only say so much on television, particularly when a fair amount of time is ... Read more »

A History of Violence

This has to be one of the best movies of the year. How rare to see a thrilling movie that doesn’t exploit its violence, that doesn’t follow the tired old formulas. Tired? Hell, most of the shoot-’em-ups we see these days are so phony, so predictable, so paint-by-numbers that I’m amazed they have the energy to stumble into the last, stupid reel with any pulse at all. ... Read more »

Hit and Run

People who go to Comic Con in San Diego every year live for the next $200-300,000,000 blockbuster, the next John Carter, the next Batman, the new Zombie Apocalypse. They slaver over the trailers debuted there, and haunt the Internet for more previews. Summer movie people. Looking for the movies that the studios sometimes spend as much ... Read more »

Hitch

With some movies, it’s a matter of expectations. You don’t go to see Animal House and come out saying, “Well, it wasn’t as good as To Kill a Mockingbird.” You go in expecting a romantic comedy, which is a genre that is tough to do and hasn’t worked for me much lately. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not as romantic as I used to be, or ... Read more »

The Hitch-Hiker

It’s probably a good thing that this film had faded from memory when my friend Chris and I, and tens of thousands of other hippies, stuck out our thumbs with nothing but our backpacks and high hopes back in the late 1960s. Back then, people would still stop for you, and sometimes take you quite a distance. (Our record was from Fort Worth, Texas, to San Mateo, California, in about ... Read more »

Hitchcock

In the scene where Hitch is trying to get script approval for Psycho from the blue-nose censor board that existed at the time, the head Bowdlerizer says there is no way they will approve showing a toilet on screen. There has never been a toilet in any American picture, he says, and there won’t be on his watch. I’m wondering if this can be literally true. I know ... Read more »

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Believe it or not, I have never read Mr. Adams’ wildly popular books. My understanding is that the whole Hitchhiker phenomenon was born from a BBC radio series, which I never heard, later became 4 or 5 books, a TV mini-series which I never viewed, a record album which I never spun, several stage adaptations which I never attended, and a video game which I never viddied.

I ... Read more »

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Every once in a while a movie comes along where I just hate everything about it. This is one of them. It is loud, stupid, it wants to be funny and it isn’t. It is ultra-ultra-violent. And yes, I know this is meant to be comedy violence, no more to be taken seriously than a Tom and Jerry animated cartoon … but I couldn’t help it. It was too much, too motherfucking much.

Which takes ... Read more »