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!
“In A World . . .” by a Lake
In a World . . . (2013), a new comic film by a woman named Lake Bell, is frequently droll and honest (with some atypical humor), but finally too soft and tame for my taste. The love interest for main character Carol (Bell)---an amiable, none-too-virile bore (Demetri...
It’s Hard to Dislike “A Hard Day’s Night”
A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester, is the Beatles' best movie, which is not saying much. What says significantly more is that it is probably the finest screen comedy of 1964 (to me, it ain't Dr. Strangelove). Alun Owen's script is funny and witty,...
“Kick Ass 2” & The Critics
Most of the critics have been slamming Kick-Ass 2. Check out rottentomatoes.com. As usual, though, they find it difficult to explain their opposition. They think the film is gratuitous---or something. Largely the reviews are interchangeable and thus boring. Also,...
The Inclusive, Illiberal “Kick-Ass 2”
In Kick-Ass 2 (2013), a frightfully masculine Jim Carrey plays a superhero called Colonel Stars and Stripes, who is as violent as he is humanitarian, and is ostensibly born-again. It's an encouraging fact: Never does Jeff Wadlow's sequel to Kick-Ass disparage the...
Go Murmur Somewhere Else: The French Film, “Murmur of the Heart”
In the early Seventies, French director Louis Malle made a film about adolescents which deliberately went in a transgressive direction. This is Murmur of the Heart (1971), not merely a transgressive opus but, more seriously, a vile one as well. The three teenage...
The Christian Movie “Courageous” Doesn’t Cut It
I doubt that the Christian film Courageous (2012) speaks to very many nonbelievers since it is overflowing with evangelical spirituality and is not at all subtle. Alex Kendrick did a lot of work here---he directed, stars in, and co-wrote the flick with his brother...
You Blew It, Woody: “Hannah And Her Sisters”
Would that Woody Allen were a major film artist. It would be good to have some artistically successful American comedies about how we live now, and that is not what Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, from 1986, is. To begin with, it takes a long time for any of the...
A French Scheme in “La Discrete”
The French film La Discrete (1990), by Christian Vincent, is a revenge tale in which revenge becomes, first, methodical and dispassionate and, second, unimportant to the man avenging himself. This is Antoine, an aspiring writer whose paramour leaves him for another...
See Lili Levitate in “The Conjuring”
Mom gets wildly demon-possessed in James Wan's formidable The Conjuring (2013) but before that, she and the rest of the family incur "infestation": unclean spirits in the house, getting all spooky. Mom is played by a magnificent Lili Taylor, who is every bit a mother...
