Blog

I have never seen the David Mamet play, Oleanna, on stage, but surely the next best thing is watching Mamet's 1994 film of it.  William H. Macy is true and affecting as a college professor accused of sexual harassment, and Debra Eisenstadt is mesmerizing as the girl...

Greatness in English-language cinema is so blasted rare these days and, sure enough, we don't find it in the Australian December Boys (2006), a Rod Hardy picture about four boys from a Catholic orphanage and their seaside vacation.  The flick is based on a novel by...

Since in the United States we will always have a welfare system, it might as well be one that is generous and efficient apropos of nursing homes.  Medicaid makes it hard for lower middle-class families, unable to afford nursing home costs, to receive assistance, and...

Four men should have come up with a more agreeable plot than that which exists in the Bob Hope comedy, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), directed well enough by George Marshall.  In silly ways a movie star, Didi, is used to move the plot along, but the...

The 2018 film Chappaquiddick treats Senator Ted Kennedy as though he were a very unscrupulous tragic hero save he doesn't die at the end, which is significant.  Kennedy goes on living, after dopily getting together with Mary Jo Kopechne and driving her to her doom: ...

Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot is a lurid sex 'n' violence medley from 1990. Its pulp story is second-rate with its mad, insatiable Virginia Madsen character and excessively defeated blackmailer (William Sadler).  Hopper wants us to have a good time, however, primarily...

The serial murderer in the spooky The Spiral Staircase (1946) is the worst kind of man there could be---one who targets women who are especially vulnerable, women with "afflictions."  Not always a sympathetic character, old, ailing Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore) is...

Improbability rises to the sky in the crime movie, Pendulum (1969), but I find it fascinating for its honesty about civil libertarian trends, criminals, and male-female relationships.  Police captain Frank Matthews (George Peppard) arrested a murderer-rapist named...

In-Lawfully Yours is a 2016 faith-based---or Christian---picture which for a long time resembles a good Frank Capra comedy. Divorcing her husband after he two-times her, Jesse soon falls for a small-town minister who is solemnly told that Jesse is a bad influence on...