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!
No Dialing Back: “Denise Calls Up”
The first scene has a woman named Gail on the phone with a woman named Linda, apologizing for missing Linda's recent party and asking how many people attended. Linda replies that there was none who attended. The party was a total bust. This because, in Hal Salwen's...
The Good Humor Of Abbott And Costello: “Hit the Ice”
The one-liners are what you'd expect: wholly trivial, sometimes hokey, usually funny. The sight gags are wild and punchy and usually entertaining. Hit the Ice (1943) is probably more of a musical than a comedy-team farce ought to be: singer and recording star Ginny...
My Dislike For The Movie, “Iris”
I consider Iris (2001), about the British novelist Iris Murdoch and Alzheimer's disease, a lousy film. Not only does smug Murdoch wear her intellect on her sleeve, which is bad enough, but nothing justifies such a thing since the talk here is constantly intellectually...
Oh, For That Russian “Window to Paris”
On Window to Paris (which I'm not sure ever made it to DVD): A Russian film, this, which came out in 1993 and which features a teacher affirming to his pupils, "You were born into a miserable, crooked, bankrupt country, but it is still your home." That is, post-Red...
I Picked Up A Copy Of The Libertarian-Conservative “Prelude: Hit-Girl” – A Book Review
Well, the full title is Kick Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl (2012), the second in the series of graphic novels by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. Hit-Girl is in the title since she---Mindy McCready---is the focus here: the young hero who calls himself Kick Ass takes a back...
That’s One Self-Defeating Guy: “The Lost Weekend”
Every time he opens his eyes as big as saucers in 1945's The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland performs in a mannered fashion, but it doesn't prevent the film from being formidable. It is a fine, non-signature Billy Wilder piece in which Milland plays a Renaissance man, a...
The 2015 Movies I Liked Best
I did not see The End of the Tour, Ex Machina, or Love & Mercy, but of those 2015 films I did see, here are the five best: Two Days, One Night; Brooklyn; Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation; Spotlight; and Cinderella. Honorable mention: Inside Out, Slow West, Furious...
Bleak & Good: “Drugstore Cowboy”
Matt Dillon's drug addict and thief in the 1989 film, Drugstore Cowboy, declares that no one can talk a junkie out of being a user. The pic is so dark that apparently this includes the junkie himself: he is incapable of such a feat. It is not so much the drug...
Joy Is One Thing, “Joy” Is Another
David O. Russell's Joy (2015) may do a better job of showing the difficult struggle of building a manufacturing business than any movie in history, but to me it gets rather boring and colorless during its second half. It's less interesting, in fact, than Atlas...
