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!
“Three Women,” Dreamy
Director Robert Altman had "a succession of dreams" and afterwards based one of his movies---Three Women (1977)---on these dreams. Hence the film, though linear, is profoundly weird. It is the story of Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) and Pinky Rose (Sissy...
On The Old Movie, “Dillinger”
There is a useless prelude here in which a movie audience watches newsreel about John Dillinger the gangster before Dillinger's father shuffles out on the stage to deliver his own information about the man. It actually promises to be boring. The prelude belongs to...
Mike White Is Corny And Worse: “The Good Girl”
The Good Girl, from 2002, is a flop. Jennifer Aniston plays Justine Last, a retail store assistant who attempts to escape her hated husband and her hated life by having a no-account affair with a young neurotic (Jake Gyllenhaal). Intelligent people are well aware...
“Straw Dogs” Is Better Than Most Of Today’s Fare
I'm tired of contemporary Hollywood films that appear to have been scripted by young, liberal know-it-alls (example: Spider-Man: Homecoming). By no means is this the case with a Hollywood item from the past like Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971), which I reviewed on...
Nightclub Ida: “The Man I Love”
In large measure Raoul Walsh's The Man I Love (1947) is about nightclub life, with a chunk of real shadiness tossed in. Ida Lupino stars as a tough-minded but amiable club singer, who doesn't care much about her job since her boss (Robert Alda) is a cocky heel who...
“A Summer with Monika”: A Summer With Sweater Girl
A Summer with Monika (1953) is a Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman from a novel by Per Anders Fogelstrom. Monika (Harriet Andersson), for a long time a believable character, and Harry (Lars Ekberg), not much explored, are two adolescent lovers. Both are...
Scott Vs. The Robbers In The Movie, “Seven Men from Now”
The commercial Western novels from earlier decades usually had their cowboy heroes fall in love with a young woman who had not yet married. The 1956 Western movie, Seven Men from Now---it too is commercial, of course---offers a hero with a sure liking for a young...
Another Christian-Catholic Novel: “The Dark Angels”
The novel The Dark Angels (1936), by Francois Mauriac, presents us with the complicated Gradere, a man who allows himself to sink into utterly foul illegality. A particular woman, Aline, is a threat to him because of Gradere's dirty business practices, and an elderly...
Good And Not Quite For Kids: “My Life as a Zucchini”
It looks like director Claude Barras was able to borrow a good story for his stop-motion animated film, My Life as a Zucchini (2017), based on a novel called Autobiography of a Zucchini. Engaging and sad, it has to do with children in an orphanage, and their big-eyed,...
