Fuck yeah, I do! So many questions! Like, why the fuck did producer/director/star Bradley Cooper even make this movie? Did he wake up one morning and think to himself “You know what America needs to hear? It needs to hear how legendary composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, having lost his way in life, ultimately found spiritual redemption…
Tag: movies
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” Q: What would life be like if smart girls ruled the world? A: Not so hot!
Mattel’s legendary high fashion gal on the go Barbie is pushing 65. Most of the jokes in Greta Gerwig’s monster, monster hit of the same name have a similar vintage. Seriously, is there a single gag in this movie that couldn’t have appeared on Saturday Night Live back in 1975? But the monster success of…
Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”: Actually, it’s pretty dumb
Two thirds of the way through Oppenheimer, I asked myself “Why did Christopher Nolan make this picture?” Because, except for a few cheesy nits, which I will most assuredly pick later, what we have gotten, about two hours in, is essentially a pseudo documentary, a laboriously accurate, $100 million reconstruction of the events leading up…
Is “Ishtar” a neglected masterpiece? HELL NO!
For a good ten years after its release in 1987, Ishtar, the famously ill-fated Warren Beatty/Elaine May/Dustin Hoffman thrilla in the desert, was a literal punchline. Virtually any public meltdown, from a bungled presidential debate to a failed spring line, could be wittily dismissed with the line “Hey, it wasn’t that bad—it wasn’t like it…
Can Nancy Drew crack this case? I’ll bet you $23.80 she can!
If you’re half as desperate for “escape” as I am, you’ll welcome the opportunity to take a 4-hour B-movie bath, courtesy of YouTube, in Nancy Drew, Detective (shown above), Nancy Drew, Reporter, Nancy Drew, Trouble-Shooter, and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, a sometimes delightful and often at least satisfying mini-series of sorts cranked out…
Burning the Bonfire: Vanneman does Salamon does De Palma does Wolfe
(Editor’s Note: In 1987, Tom Wolfe published a novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. In 1990, Brian De Palma directed the film version. In 1991, Julie Salamon published The Devil’s Candy, her chronicle of the making of the film. In 2022, I read her book and wrote this article.) The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom…
Haters gonna hate. Ignore them. Jurassic World Dominion is pretty damn good!
OK, if you missed Jurassic World Dominion in IMAX (I did not) thanks to my laziness, well, I apologize, but, really, it’s your own damn fault for letting the bi-coastal blue state big mouths do your thinking for you. In the future, if you get the chance to see big dinos on the big screen,…
Woody Allen’s Autobiography: Words of Wisdom from the Nothing Man
Woody Allen is not large, but he contains multitudes, and some of them show up in his “controversial” autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, which the powers of righteous wokitude finally allowed to be published back in 2020, which I got around to reading in 2021 and am now “reviewing” in 2022. I have read many autobiographies,…
Shorter Ann Hornaday: Yes, I am an airhead. Why do you ask?
Because it’s Christmas, the Washington Post has dumped upon its hapless readers several thousand words of breathless prose from film critic Ann Hornaday in the form of a frenzied dithyramb on the very unlikely subject of “America’s Most Dangerous Movie”, Oliver Stone’s JFK, quite possibly the most morally repulsive “major” film ever made in the…
Hail to thee, Blithe Spirits! Well, one of them, anyway.
Almost seven years ago, writing in the Bright Lights Film Journal, in a piece rather enigmatically entitled “We’ll Roll in the Hey Nonny Nonny!” Antic Antiques to Keep a Drowsy Emperor Awake, if He’s Not Too Sleepy, I wrote about first my fascination and then my frustration with the 1945 film version of Noël Coward’s…