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!
God Bless You But No Thanks: “The Convent”
The Convent (1995), by Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira, is a Christian film set in a locus of angels and gargoyles, but is, alas, rather tedious and burdened with a confused plot. It has a monastery, a statue of Mary Magdalene, a statue of a crucified monk, a demonic...
Supremely Worth Meeting: “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944)
In the sublime Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Judy Garland plays a teenaged girl even though she was then in her early 20s and divorced. But it hardly matters: she is both convincing and luminous in the role. This is partly due to makeup artist Dorothy Ponedel, but...
Faulty With Its Feet On The Ground: “The Fault In Our Stars”
Hollywood has transferred to the big screen a very popular YA novel, The Fault in Our Stars, about teens with cancer (principally two of them---in a romance). Although a strong film in several ways, I found it largely unsatisfying because of the sick boy (Ansel...
Drinking Buddies In Tulsa: “Home, James”
Those who have never visited Tulsa, Oklahoma---my home town---might be quite taken by the buildings and other sights filmed by Jonathan Rossetti for his low-budget Home, James (2014), a love story set in Tulsa. The movie is clearly a valentine to the city, while the...
“The Killers” In Two Movies
The man who hires the assassins is morally worse than the assassins---that, at any rate, is the case in Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946), a dignified and mostly interesting noir mystery. The titles sequence calls the film Ernest Hemingway's The Killers since it is...
Report #2 On The New “24” Program
The 24 reboot on Fox (Live Another Day) is getting shockingly intense. Terrorist insanity streams forward and the U.S. President (William Devane) had better start relying on Jack Bauer in a wholehearted way. Er, the U.S. government has really been blowing it. The...
Joe, You Should Have Made It More Filling: “Drinking Buddies”
The dialogue in the movie Drinking Buddies (2013) is so natural it is eminently dull and banal. At least it's a romantic drama that doesn't care about the conventions of American romantic flicks, but it is pretty thin. Also, why the women in the film are so fond of...
Enjoying Elizabeth Spencer’s “The Light in the Piazza” – A Book Review
Clara is a young American woman with the mental age of a ten-year-old. Fabrizio, who lives in Florence where Clara and her mother Margaret are vacationing, falls in love with the American without knowing about this childlike mind. Ineluctably Clara is happy in the...
“Finding Nemo”: An Appreciation
Underwater, and abovewater, seascapes abound and offer much in the Pixar cartoon feature, Finding Nemo (2003). I couldn't catch everything the fast-talking sea creatures said, but I saw the sights. Triple-colored clown fish suspended (floating) above the anemone,...
