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!
Walls And Castles: The Movie, “The Glass Castle”
I could not care less about the perverse, monstrously irresponsible father (played by Woody Harrelson) of a New York magazine writer named Jeanette Walls. Admittedly, The Glass Castle (2017), based on Walls's memoir, is incessantly interesting---and vivid---but...
The Movie, “Suddenly” With Its Town Called Suddenly
Suddenly (1954) is a pulp fiction film about a trio of punks hired to murder, as he passes through the tiny town of Suddenly, the President of the United States. It's properly economical with some vigorous action, as in a strong scene where one of the killers...
I’m Buddy Lovin’ It: “The Nutty Professor”
The "inner man" Prof. Julius Kelp releases from himself through chemical means is the rude, unspeakably conceited Buddy Love---not a good inner man. Julius, a college chemistry teacher, fails to realize this, and never expects Stella (Stella Stevens) to fall for him....
Ain’t The “Possession” For Me: On The LaBute Film
Unread by me, an A.S. Byatt novel, Possession, became in 2002 a weak film directed and co-written by Neil LaBute. Such LaBute films as Your Friends and Neighbors and Nurse Betty are dismally offputting, while this one is merely poorly written. In it, two literary...
The Rural Road: “Two-Lane Blacktop”
Footage of the rural road in America, with plenty of medium-long shots and no score, dominates the screen in the 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman. A flick about two car nuts who routinely race other street drivers for money, it is so low-key it is...
Young Lovers And Polio In 1949
The print I saw (on DVD) of Ida Lupino's The Young Lovers (1949) is so technically deficient it seems ready to come apart at the seams. The audio, for example, is often lousy. As for the movie, it is a nicely serious love story in which the girl (Sally Forrest), a...
“The Clockmaker” Blues
The French film The Clockmaker (1973) tells us that France in the Seventies is a country in which a loutish, abusive security officer is allowed to get away with the garbage he does. As the picture opens, the somewhat political son of the tale's main character, a...
“Army Of Shadows” Against An Army Of Brutality (The Melville Film)
Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969), adapted from a Joseph Kessel novel, would be a mere adventure story if it were not for its impressive sophistication and excellent execution. It follows the actions of Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and other French...
The Honorable “Dunkirk”
Dunkirk (2017), written and directed by Christopher Nolan, presents war in Europe within the broadness, or openness, of time---and even within a relatively brief duration of time. Three time periods meet, in all of which men are warring and struggling to survive; all...
