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 Hearty Musical, “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers”
There are hillbilly men behaving badly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), but no worries. It all ends happily. Stanley Donan directed with the same sure hand he displayed in Singin' in the Rain, despite all the backlot shots (Ah, Wilderness?). Male dancing...
Charlotte And All Those Trivialities: Godard’s “A Married Woman”
The 1964 Jean-Luc Godard film, A Married Woman, held my attention for about an hour of its 94 minutes but then became dreadfully dull. The very pretty Macha Meril enacts Charlotte, who spends quality time with both husband and lover but lacks a veritable devotion to...
The Beauty Of “Brooklyn” (The New Movie, That Is)
The movie adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, Brooklyn, is so good it is inevitable to think the book must be good as well. With shining talent John Crowley directed and Nick Hornby scripted this absorbing love story about a newly emigrated Irish girl, now in Brooklyn,...
Not Bad For Redford: “Quiz Show”
1994 saw the appearance of yet another phony and unprofound docudrama: Robert Redford's Quiz Show. It deals with the deception scandal surrounding television's "Twenty-One" program in the late Fifties; contestant Charles Van Doren even had to face a congressional...
The Gang’s All Talented, “The Gang’s All Here”
If you've never seen Carmen Miranda, you'll be introduced to her almost immediately in Busby Berkeley's 1943 The Gang's All Here. She takes her charisma beyond the movie's beginning to the bananas-and-strawberries number and way beyond that to the movie's finish, and...
Capra’s Early Talkie, “Lady for a Day”
Frank Capra didn't always have good ideas for his films, but doubtless he did when he chose to direct a movie version of a Damon Runyon story, the title of which movie is Lady for a Day (1933), with a screenplay by Robert Riskin. There are no idealists or innocents...
On Two Stories By Sister Mary Gilbert And John Updike
Among the stories in the 1962 volume of The Best American Short Stories, published by Houghton Mifflin, are two whose themes are related to religious faith. One of them, "The Model Chapel," was written by Sister Mary Gilbert and has to do with the raising of money to...
“The Secret In Their Eyes” (2015) Is Horse Manure
The only good thing about this poorly written remake of a 2009 Argentine film is most of the acting. Chiwetel Ejiofor overplays his part, but Alfred Molina is still a delight to watch, even in a small role. Julia Roberts is trenchant, moving, and convincingly...
Those Self-Seeking Adults: “Children of Paradise” (The 1945 Film)
Children of Paradise (1945) is the classic 190-minute film by director Marcel Carne and scenarist Jacques Prevert. The paradise of the title is not 19th century Paris, the movie's setting, but rather the personal paradise in some of the characters' minds. The...
