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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! 

Back To 1990 And The Impressive Film, “Mister Johnson”

Bruce Beresford, once again, directed perceptively when he made Mister Johnson (1990), which stars Maynard Eziashi as a black man in British Colonial Nigeria who aims to live the good life.  But there is no good life when the person himself is not good and when he is...

“The Past”: A 2014 Gem From Farhadi

Did an affair between Marie-Anne (Berenice Bejo) and the married Samir (Tahar Rahim) compel Samir's depressive wife to try to commit suicide?  This is the central question in The Past (2014), a film by Iranian director-writer Ashar Farhadi (A Separation) and one set...

From Un-forbidden Hollywood: “Forbidden”

Eddie Darrow, played by Tony Curtis, is sent to Macao, which borders China, to bring back to the U.S. a gangster's ex-wife (Joanne Dru) because of the money she possesses.  There are prodigious difficulties, though, because 1) the ex-wife (Christine by name) is...

The Impossible Gets Done Again: “Mission Impossible—Fallout”

The 2018 Mission: Impossible---Fallout is another top-notch action picture in the long-lived saga.  Near the end there are the unkillable bodies of the good people (especially Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt) amid mountains in Kashmir, which is fine.  But the film is probably...

Ready To Cut To Chase

Charley Chase was an acclaimed movie comedian of decades past.  The star of numerous two-reelers, in the silent 22-minute Be Your Age (1926), he plays a bashful nobody (or "nobody") who, darn it, just has to resign himself to his boss's, an attorney's, objectionable...

America Plants “The Last Kiss”

The American version of Gabriele Muccino's Italian film, The Last Kiss, directed by Tony Goldwyn, is as dandy as the original.  Neither flick is great, but both are vivacious dramatic grabbers. Goldwyn's film (2006) is, as critic Ella Taylor opined, an "admirably...

Fields Day: “It’s A Gift” (1934)

Life is hard enough without subjecting yourself to your own stupidity.  The store owner played by the peerless W.C. Fields in It's A Gift (1934) could attest to this if he wasn't wearing blinders.  Comic misery grows as Fields allows himself to be flatly cheated at...

Comic Art: “Love Serenade”

Miranda Otto, as 20-year-old misfit Dimity in Love Serenade (1996), gets it right:  Dimity's loneliness, shyness, quirkiness, and naive impulsiveness.  And, like her fellow players Rebecca Firth and George Shevtsov, she succeeds as a comic actor, indispensable for...

To Praise “Polonaise” (The 1976 Novel)

Centered on the characters of Krystyna, Stefan, Bruno and Rachel, the novel Polonaise, by Piers Paul Read, concerns Polish people from decades past who join, and eventually depart from, the Communist movement.  One of the book's themes is nihilism.  Another is the way...

Old Days