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!
Suicide and “The Fire Within” (A 1963 French Film)
The French director who left me disgusted with Murmur of the Heart left me satisfied with The Fire Within (the French title is Le Feu follet---"Will-o'-the-wisp"), a 1963 gem. Louis Malle, the director, outdid himself with what is an adaptation of a novel I haven't...
Quickly, The Films Of 2013
Of all the 2013 movies I saw (there are a good number I didn't see), the best are American Hustle, The Spectacular Now, Gravity, Blue Jasmine, Populaire and probably Renoir. Honorable mention goes to The Place Beyond the Pines, Enough Said, The Hobbit: The Desolation...
Jacksonian Pleasures: “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
If there are any people---I mean creatures---who have problems and struggles galore, it is the hobbit (Martin Freeman) and the dwarves inhabiting the world of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013). They strive and fight and run all the way to the cliffhanger...
Not Just Any Hustle, But An “American Hustle”
Inspired by the FBI's Abscam operation of the late '70s, American Hustle (2013), according to its own announcement after the credits, "is a work of fiction." It is unconcerned with historical re-creation. Too, for all the focus on corruption, it is not a work of...
“How Their Bodies Work”? (Politics)
I have no interest in seeing the 2013 remake of Carrie, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, but the Village Voice review of it (from October) does interest me. In particular the following two sentences grabbed my attention: "When De Palma shot the original [Carrie] in 1976,...
A Word About “The 400 Blows”
Francois Truffaut's French film The 400 Blows (1959) still impresses, and always will. We respond favorably to its autobiography, it holds us with its detail and moves at a nice clip. For a narrative work of art it has little to say, but the frozen-frame face of the...
“Live Flesh” Is ALIVE
Two women, both married, are gaga over a young ne'er-do-well---and commit adultery with him. But, well, nobody's all bad: so does Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh (1997)---it should have been translated "Trembling Flesh"---remind us. The mode is that of a serious but...
What Do We Do About The Unemployable? (Politics)
People who have been long unemployed in America will not be hired for nascent jobs. Employers are not interested in them. This is the subject of a pretty good Slate.com article by Matthew Yglesias (Dec. 11). Yet how many times can we provide these people with...
When The Press Went After “All The President’s Men”
All the President's Men, the Alan Pakula film, was a stand-out in 1976 largely because most other movies that year were so dismal. Scripted by William Goldman, Men concerns the Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein breaking of the '72 Watergate story, and is as evenhanded about...
