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!
Mother And Son And The Monster: “Room”
In Room (2015), Brie Larson enacts a woman subjected to the same nightmare the three female victims of Ariel Castro incurred. Remember the kidnapping and imprisonment? The woman has a five-year-old son (Jason Trembley) produced through the Castro-like abductor's...
Comments On The “Sleeping With Other People” Flick And Beyonce
The comic film, Sleeping with Other People (2015), starring Alison Brie, tries to be endearing through sex talk. A lot of sex talk. I was so un-endeared I stopped watching after about an hour. Re the barely talented Beyonce Knowles, I wish her performance at the...
You’ve Got The Cutest Little “Baby Doll”
A man (Karl Malden) foolish enough to marry a teenage girl many years his junior resorts to bullying and violence. He lives, it must be said, in humiliation, for his wife Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) does not love him and refuses to consummate the marriage until she...
No Dessert Of Love In Mauriac’s “The Desert of Love” – A Book Review
"You can't compare yourself to God." "Am I not God's image in your eyes? Is it not to me that you owe your taste for a certain kind of perfection?" This exchange of words does not take place except in the imagination of Dr. Paul Courreges, the main figure in...
Busy Doings In “The Last Days of Disco”
The disco club at the center of Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (1998) is, in a way, fading or perishing---there is ill-gotten gain there---but much in the lives of the characters is fading or perishing as well. This is true despite all the young-professional...
The Movie, “Illegal”: Not Bad – Not Good Either
Edward G. Robinson is the chief member of a likable cast in 1955's Illegal, a gripping crime drama until it falls apart in its last 15 minutes. Attorney Victor Scott (Robinson) is not much of a character, really; there is little examination of him, even though the...
Oh, Okay. You’re Right, Then
FYI: A couple of weeks ago I quoted a line in the 2012 graphic novel, Kick Ass 2 Prelude: Hit Girl, about "Obama's record f--king deficit." Some people may think that, because the federal deficit has been in decline for six years, this line is out-of-date,...
The Eisenhower-Era “Pork Chop Hill”
It is a campaign-enriching axiom that Eisenhower "got us out of Korea and kept us out of Vietnam." This is what a movie like Pork Chop Hill (1959), starring Gregory Peck, very much wanted. Peace talks in the Korean War have gotten underway, but Pork Chop Hill needs...
Back For 2016: “Jane the Virgin”
The crime material in the second season of Jane the Virgin is getting entertaining, more so than the scenes showing efforts to get baby Mateo, offspring of Jane, to stop wailing at night and go to sleep. I am not yet tired of Jane, but I fear I will be if nothing...
