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!
Sin Upon Sin: The Classic Film, “Day of Wrath”
A Danish man of God, Absalon (Thorkild Roose), allows an unrepentant practitioner of the dark arts to be executed on the stake despite his having rescued his young wife Anne's witchcraft-practicing mother from the same fate. The year is 1623; the film is Carl...
Pretty Ju Dou, Unpretty Life: The Movie, “Ju Dou”
Something terrible this way comes: comes to a woman living in rural China in the 1920s. She becomes the slave wife---a purchased spouse---of an old man who savagely beats her when she cannot bear him a male heir. Unbeknownst to him, the fault is his, not hers. In...
Stuff About “The DUFF”
The new high school comedy, The DUFF (2015), is entertaining, but very frequently it does not ring true. Mae Whitman nearly overacts but (oh well) this is a comedy, so in truth she is amusingly watchable, pleasantly straightforward. Although a crummy self-esteem...
They’re Real And They’re Unspectacular! 1976’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth”
There is no excuse for the Nick Roeg movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), constantly making no sense. What's more, this arty sci-fi product based on Walter Tevis's novel is a nudie show with too much sex: David Bowie, whose acting is undistinguished, eventually...
Never Mind The EU, It’s “Russian Dolls” I Want
Russian Dolls (2005), a Cedric Klapisch picture from France, is the perfect sequel to his hokey L'Auberge Espagnole because it itself is not hokey and is acceptably written. All it does, really, is catch up with Xavier and a few others five years after their...
Fears And Aspirations In “Atlantic City”
Atlantic City (1981), directed by Louis Malle and written by John Guare, shows us an old mobster of sorts who finds the beloved casinos of Atlantic City, N.J. too wholesome. Curiously, he himself, a big believer in Protecting The Women with whom he associates, is...
Can I Get Motivated To See Part II? “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I”
I hated the first Hunger Games movie and never saw the second one. As for the third film, Mockingjay, Part I (2014) . . . I got tired of the idol worship heaped by the people of District 13 on Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and was glad the boring Julianne...
Hungarian “Love” (A 1971 Film
A smart swipe at the Communist system in Hungary, before the fall of that system, issues from Love, one of the finest films of the Seventies. A jailed political dissident provides moviemaker Karoly Makk with a fulcrum for exploring the theme of marital and family...
A Movie With An Intriguing Title: “House of Sand and Fog”
In House of Sand and Fog (2003), Jennifer Connelly plays Kathy, a discontent ex-boozer evicted by mistake from the house her father left her. Ben Kingsley plays Colonel Behrani, once in the Iranian army and now an American citizen, who buys the seized house, orders a...
