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!
“The Texas Rangers,” On Screen
There is quite a wrinkle in the old Western, The Texas Rangers (1936), in that the two principal characters who join the famous Rangers are fakers---stagecoach robbers hiding out in the organization. Fred MacMurray is one of them, jocular Jack Oakie is another; but...
Ex-Druggie Maggie In “Clean”
Clean, the engrossing 2003 picture by Olivier Assayas, stretches from Canada to Western Europe, and from heroin to methadone to "clean." Maggie Cheung gets jailed in Canada for possession, then moves to Paris to beat her addiction. Plus she wants to see her young son...
“Sunday” Indie: From ’97
Oliver (David Suchet) is a laid-off IBM technician, and he is homeless. Every day is Sunday for such a man; he has no job to go to. On one particular Sunday, he meets Madeleine (Lisa Harrow), a little-known actress separated from her husband. After Madeleine...
When In The Mountain, There Is No Tiger . . . : “Save the Tiger”
The star of the film Save the Tiger (1973), Jack Lemmon plays Harry Stoner, a Los Angeles clothing manufacturer who, in financial dire straits, plots to have one of his factories set on fire for the insurance money. . . As it happens, Harry prefers the past to his...
The Film, “Nothing Sacred” Is Nothing Bad
Was there ever a time when American cities gave great adulation to young women dying of something like radium poisoning? I don't know, but in the comic (and funny) Nothing Sacred (1937), the Big Apple does so for Vermont girl Hazel---without knowing that Hazel is...
Re Chapter Fifty-One Of “Jane the Virgin”
On Monday night's Jane the Virgin, a woman tells Rogelio, Jane's father, she would like to have a baby with him since the two have much in common. For one thing, the woman asserts, they're both "aging narcissists." What other response would Rogelio make than to say...
The Express Way: Spielberg’s “The Sugarland Express”
Is The Sugarland Express (1974) a stupid movie, or is it just that the people in it are stupid? Well, a ton of human stupidity obtains, but when it comes down to brass tacks, it's The Sugarland Express that's stupid. The lower class woman played by Goldie Hawn is...
Back To Hitchcock: A Word About “Marnie”
Is Marnie (1964) one of Alfred Hitchcock's artistic entertainments, like the majority of his films? For the most part it is, for it is consistently powerful and pictorially fine. Consider the brunette female thief washing the dye out of her hair to reveal a blonde...
Goin’ To The Chapel And We’re . . . : Italy’s “The Best Man”
In Pupi Avati's exquisite Italian picture, The Best Man (1997), the narrative unfolds on the last day of 1899 when a young woman called Francesca (Ines Sastre) is expected to marry by parental arrangement an unappealing man. By no means does she love him, but to...
