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!
Making Hay On The Holiday: “Mr. Bean’s Holiday”
In my view, the facial play of Rowan Atkinson, who enacts Mr. Bean in Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007), is more over-the-top than funny, but he grows on you. And this movie grows on you. It grew on me, anyway. It turns out to be an appealing slapstick farce, its titular...
Comments On Two Online Stories: “Murder at CPAC” & “Beautification Claws”
Liberty Island is a website that publishes stories whose meaning is essentially conservative. So far I have read several of them, one of which, Jamie Wilson's "Murder at CPAC" (2014), is a tasty spoof and then some. More than a spoof. In the noir thriller mode,...
Overshadowed: On The 1962 Film, “Eclipse”
Style and theme are everything in the exquisitely made Italian film Eclipse, or L'Eclisse (1962), one of the four or five major pictures of Michelangelo Antonioni. This is the one about Vittoria (Monica Vitti) and Piero (Alain Delon) in the modern age. Here,...
Queenie The Swede: 1934’s “Queen Christina”
Queen Christina (1934) transcends its flaws. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Greta Garbo, it relates historical nonsense about the 17th century's Queen of Sweden who abdicated her throne, but the historical nonsense is not a flaw. We can take comfort,...
Briefly, The “Jersey Boys” Flick
In the movie version of Jersey Boys (2014), Vincent Piazza does deft work as Tommy DeVito, an obnoxious member of the Four Seasons pop group. The part is an Italian stereotype, though, which is hardly surprising for a film that has zero character exploration. Here...
Report #3 On The “24” Reboot
SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen the latest (June 23) episode. In my view, the final season of the old 24 series was lousy. For one thing, Jack Bauer committed the immoral act of shooting down an unarmed Katee Sackhoff. In the reboot, he throws an unarmed Margot...
Do Blonds Have More Fun?
Well, Hmmm? Is it natural. Or is it dyed. Or is it a wig? Hey...It's late. I'm turning into a pumpkin here. What's a hipster to do? That's something that Rod Stewart believes huh?Of course I got a heck of a topic about him.. But that is somewhere else on this blog. I...
A Minor Treat: “Driving Miss Daisy”
Bruce Beresford often fashions wonderful endings for his movies, and Driving Miss Daisy (1989) is no exception. Nowhere does the film display more heart, more humanizing feeling, than in its last sequence. The feeling doesn't seem as legitimate as that in, say, the...
Oh, Those Critics And That “Immigrant” Movie
That critics would fervently praise a mediocre film like James Gray's The Immigrant (2014) points up that movie criticism is still in the same dismal state it has always been in. No, it's in a worse state, for, after all, we used to have the fine criticism of John...
