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!
Is It “On the Avenue” Or In Tin Pan Alley?
Re the 1937 film musical, On the Avenue: On the avenue, there is savory Irving Berlin music and some pleasurable singing and dancing. Alice Faye is somewhat miscast as a jealous meanie, but as a performer she is a heartening jewel. Musically Dick Powell holds his...
One Of The Few Good Movies From The ’80s: “Say Anything”
A love story, Say Anything (1989) has the distinction of focusing on a teenaged boyfriend (John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler) who is a Great Guy, however unambitious. The main proof that he's a Great Guy is his romantic---or chivalrous---prowess---not aimed at just anyone...
Falling Into P.C.: The Film, “Falling Down”
In Joel Schumacher's Falling Down (1993), Michael Douglas plays divorced, jobless, bespectacled Bill, who snaps under modern day pressure and starts doing deleterious things en route to his ex-wife's house. Its first half hour is wrenchingly honest, but then it gets...
John Huston Films “Wise Blood”: An Appreciation
Because the Flannery O'Connor novel Wise Blood is utterly fascinating (on the second reading, that is; on the first reading it meanders), the faithful film version by John Huston is utterly fascinating. It tells of a Southern oddball who rebels against his...
Lost Soul Vigilantes: The Movie, “Blue Ruin”
In Blue Ruin (2014), a recent film by Jeremy Saulnier, a loner who lives as a bum learns that the murderer of his parents is being released from prison. Hungry for vengeance, wide-eyed Dwight, the loner (played by Macon Blair), tracks down the ex-con and kills him,...
“Ace in the Hole”, Skulduggery At The Mountain
The 1951 Billy Wilder film, Ace in the Hole, is one of those wherein Wilder expresses his anger over deception and skulduggery, the bilking of the innocent or vulnerable for the sake of money or prestige or sex. A newspaper reporter (Kirk Douglas) "befriends" a man...
The Movie “Birdman”—Notable
Too fancy but still fascinatingly shot, Birdman (2014) is a notable film but not a great one. Though awash in coarse language, its serious and personal nature is potent, and it can be funny. It asks how an individual's sense of worth is to be had in the present...
“Music and Lyrics”: For A While It’s A Funny Treat
In Marc Lawrence's Music and Lyrics (2007), Alex (Hugh Grant), a forgotten singer once a part of the raved-about PoP! band, gets a chance to write a song for, and record with, a currently famous pop queen called Cora Corman (Haley Bennett). Lacking any talent for...
“Move Over, Darling,” Doris Day Will Be Joining Us
Effervescent but never silly, convincing in her emotional range, Doris Day stars as a woman long believed to be dead---but not---in Michael Gordon's Move Over, Darling (1963). James Garner co-stars as her well-to-do husband newly married to Polly Bergen. Day is not...
