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 Job On Jobs: Last Year’s “Steve Jobs” Film
I no longer care much for Citizen Kane, because of the screenplay. I actually like Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for Steve Jobs (2015), in which Steve Jobs is the Citizen Kane of the 80s and 90s, better, for all the factual nonsense there is supposed to be. Sorkin's...
The Canny Barbara Loden: “Wanda”
Wanda (1971)---written, directed and acted in by Barbara Loden---is one of the truly good American films of the Seventies. The newly unemployed, soon-to-be-divorced Wanda (Loden) ignorantly takes up with a robber (Michael Higgins) who is unstable and tyrannical....
She Gives Good Face, Not “Funny Face”
With savvy and imagination Stanley Donen directed the musical, Funny Face (1957), wherein a book store clerk (Audrey Hepburn) is rapidly turned into a fashion model. Early on, the movie's appeal is perfectly evident: Hepburn passably sings a pop masterpiece, "How...
The Painter, Unhappy: The 1976 “Edvard Munch”
From Germany in 1976 came a biopic and dramatized quasi-documentary on the life of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, and though seriously flawed, it is also fascinating and felt. Peter Watkins directed and, in collaboration with the cast, wrote the script for Edvard...
Goodbye, Doris
With an outstanding range, Sally Field terrifically enacts a poorly conceived character in Hello, My Name is Doris (2016), a pack-of-lies movie by Michael Showalter and Laura Terruso. Pack-of-lies? Yes: Doris is a bashful woman deeply silly enough to chase a much...
“God’s Not Dead 2” (2016) Is Mainly For Christians
It's mainly for Christian viewers, yes, but deals with something serious in American affairs: the effort to suppress all references to Christian doctrine in public institutions, and to suppress Christian actions (such as the refusal to make a same-sex "wedding" cake,...
“Wild River”: What’s The New Deal?
In the 1960 film, Wild River, a love story involving Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick arises amid a conflict between necessary government interference and small-minded hostility---but also a sense of dignity---in the rural South. Clift plays a man working for the...
“Thrones” Again: Season 5 Continues
I just finished watching the seventh episode of Game of Thrones (Season 5) on DVD. In this season, there is a religious cult called the Faith Militant which reminds me of the Taliban. It's a wonder even Cersei (Lena Headey), who ends up being arrested by the cult,...
Ups And Downs In The Movie, “Down With Love”
Peyton Reed's Down With Love (2003) is a charming curio about love and sex. Actually it values sex over love without realizing it, which is a pity. Another pity is that it was made strictly in the mode of the old Rock Hudson-Doris Day confections of 1959 to 1964,...
