Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
Re The 1956 “Ten Commandments” Movie
The acting in Cecil DeMille's The Ten Commandments is not always good, so it's a wonder the thespians manage to exude as much true spirituality as they do. Not that it is never artificial---of course it is---but the artificiality of the entire picture fails to upend...
“Pickup On South Street”: Pick Up, No Discarding
The Sam Fuller film, Pickup on South Street (1953), is probably the only movie ever made in which a prostitute, or former prostitute, is accused of being a subversive Communist. But the woman in question, Candy (Jean Peters), simply doesn't know the company she...
Truly? Clint Eastwood’s “True Crime”
Clint Eastwood miscast himself as a newspaper reporter in the 1999 True Crime, but a bigger problem is the weak plot. Based on an Andrew Klavan novel, the film's serious subject is the death-row conviction of an innocent man (Isaiah Washington). Steve, the reporter,...
Naughty Society: Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game”
In the late 1930s, film artist Jean Renoir was not happy with French society, which he exposed in La Regle du jeu (1939)---The Rules of the Game---as unserious and self-seeking and infernally adulterous. Curiously, class distinctions take a step back (both Christine...
Parlor Gamers In Action: The Movie, “Game Night”
True to Hollywood's mixed genre tendency, Game Night (2018) is an arrant comedy-adventure starring Jason Bateman and Rachel MacAdams. Although the action of the adventure is stronger than the zippy comedy, some of the jokes are quite amusing. Others, though, are...
Love And Typewriters: France’s “Populaire”
Though overlong, the French film Populaire (2013) is an entertaining homage to American movie comedies of the Fifties, taking place in 1959. Deborah Francois plays an appallingly incompetent secretary who nevertheless has an amazing knack for typing, while Romain...
Not Really Caring About “The 40 Year Old Virgin”
After seeing Judd Apatow's The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) again, I was surprised to discover how frequently boring it actually is (e.g., the nightclub sequence). It tries to be engaging through highly sexual talk and very daring sight gags. With the latter it...
Hitting Hard: “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm” (A Book Review)
The Siege of Trencher's Farm, a 1969 novel by Gordon M. Williams, is about the cold and violent impulses of the plebes in rural England. It inspired the making of the Peckinpah film, Straw Dogs, a good picture but not very faithful to Williams's novel. As in the...
Bogie Making A “Dark Passage”
A 1947 Delmer Daves picture, Dark Passage, has Humphrey Bogart (character name: Vincent Parry) as an alleged wife killer running from the law. "Alleged" is as far as it goes: a woman called Irene (Lauren Bacall) knows he is innocent, hides him and supplies him with...
