Movies

Movies for Memorial Day on Turner Classics

May 24, 2013
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Movies for Memorial Day on Turner Classics

Turner Classic Movies—cable TV’s old-movie channel—has another of its excellent holiday-themed marathons this weekend, a Memorial Day War Movie Marathon. The selection of movies demonstrates how much Hollywood has changed over the decades, from an overtly patriotic but thoughtful purveyor of serious entertainment with an intent to convey positive values, to one of increasing cynicism and loss of national, social, and cultural morale since the late 1960s. Whatever one may think of that transition, it is real and highly visible in the array of movies…

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Eric Rohmer: Interviews edited by Fiona Handyside

May 21, 2013
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Eric Rohmer: Interviews edited by Fiona Handyside

I have written previously in this publication about the French film director Eric Rohmer (http://stkarnick.com/?p=4963) .  Rohmer (1920-2010) was a widely and deeply cultured man and his  marvellous cinema is one of the most beautiful and intelligent.  Its focus is on character more than plot and relies heavily on dialogue while at the same time is sensitive to the beauty of the world. Before becoming a full-time filmmaker, he was a critic and editor of Cahiers du Cinema, one of the most influential journals of…

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Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep

April 28, 2013
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Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep is a  fictional drama about former members of the violent radical leftist group, the Weather Underground (that actually existed).  A number of them went underground after a bank robbery  in Michigan committed by  some of its members in which a bank guard was killed.  The film opens thirty years afterwards when one of the perpetrators decides to give herself up.  The film follows the ramifications of this on other former members, of whom Robert Redford (who directed the film) is the…

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Annette Funicello, 1942-2013

April 8, 2013
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Annette Funicello, 1942-2013

Annette Funicello, famous as an early Mousketeer and as the star of a string of 1960s beach movies, died today at the age of 70. I remember her well. I wasn’t one of those who had a crush on her, since her wave crested before I hit adolescence, but I was well aware of her. After working many years with Disney she got cast with Frankie Avalon in a string of silly beach blanket movies. She also had a successful career as a singer. Through…

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Les Mediocrite: Oscar at 85

February 25, 2013
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Les Mediocrite: Oscar at 85

Any awards program longer than a David Lean film that simultaneously left this viewer longing for the comparable whimsy of previous wince-inducing hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco has to be judged a disaster – three-and-one-half hours signifying nothing other than the egos of those put in charge of this year’s Oscar telecast. Admittedly, I threw in the towel less than two hours in, but I didn’t see the point of going any further after watching a tribute to 2002’s Chicago and an over-the-top rendition…

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‘Promised Land’: Big Oil Propaganda Film Fails Screenwriting 101

January 7, 2013
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‘Promised Land’: Big Oil Propaganda Film Fails Screenwriting 101

The big reveal in 'Promised Land' comes in the opening credits, when Image Nation Abu Dhabi is listed as a producer. Follow the money. The anti-fracking message that follows is an international conspiracy against the U.S. domestic natural gas industry by Hollywood and the oil-rich United Emirates. I'm only half-joking about the conspiracy part, but when a Middle Eastern company helps fund a movie that throws its natural-resource competitor under the bus you do have to wonder just a bit. Especially since the film was…

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Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’—A Caustic, Comic Look at America’s Changing Morality

December 31, 2012
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Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’—A Caustic, Comic Look at America’s Changing Morality

My recommendation for New Year's Eve viewing, if you're inclined to watch a movie: 'The Apartment,' directed by Billy Wilder. Turner Classic Movies is showing it tonight beginning at 10 p.m. EST. It's one of Billy Wilder's best films, and it won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine star as a mismatched couple in New York City in 1960, a time when the nation's values were changing rapidly. Wilder catches the enormity of the shift in moral…

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‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ is Good, but Disappoints

December 28, 2012
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‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ is Good, but Disappoints

So I finally saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. And I enjoyed it. And yet… I understand why some people were disappointed. I suppose I was a little disappointed myself, though that shouldn’t be taken as a thumbs down. First of all, the good parts. Martin Freeman is a wonderful, wonderful Bilbo Baggins. I can’t imagine how the role could have been better played. Superb casting, superb job. I liked the visuals. Some people, or so I’ve read, have trouble with the unusually high speed…

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Review: ‘Hitchcock’ Movie for the Ignorant Only

December 19, 2012
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Review: ‘Hitchcock’ Movie for the Ignorant Only

'Hitchcock’s' main problem is that it doesn’t find reality interesting enough. It decides to ignore the drama that actually surrounded the production in favor of the fictional and naturally far better drama that someone has invented in their heads, to make political points and strike blows for feminism.

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A Day that Exceeds Nigel Tufnel’s Dreams

December 12, 2012
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A Day that Exceeds Nigel Tufnel’s Dreams

As I’m sure you know, today is 12/12/12. This means that 11/11/11 – or Nigel Tufnel day – was exactly one year, one month, and one day ago. Nigel Tufnel, of course, was the legendary (?) guitarist for Spinal Tap who cherished his special Marshall amp, which the band could always count on when it needed that extra push, over the cliff. But even Nigel didn’t dare dream about taking it up to 12.

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Killing Time Lamely—Brad Pitt’s Anti-Capitalist Mess

December 7, 2012
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Killing Time Lamely—Brad Pitt’s Anti-Capitalist Mess

Your humble writer's parents used to employ the phrase, "the height of laziness," whenever they perceived sloppy execution of household tasks, farm chores, or homework. If either of them had taken up criticism as a vocation, they would've applied that phrase to 'Killing Them Softly,' a Brad Pitt vehicle abounding with artistic laziness. A film noir of sorts, 'Killing Them Softly' attempts an analogy between the bad actors responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and criminals of every rank and social standing in a film…

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Hollywood Comedy, Then and Now

December 3, 2012
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Hollywood Comedy, Then and Now

Not to be judgmental, but if you want to see how much the moral universe of Hollywood has changed, watch these two sophisticated 1940s comedies on back-to-back nights, then go out and watch any current release. It was bracing to see Sturges and Lubitsch on successive nights and realize their comedic successors are Judd Apatow and the Farrelly Bros -both of whom I often like. Still, the decline in intelligence and sophistication between either of these classics and "Dumb and Dumber" is obvious and more…

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Book Review — ‘Shooting Hollywood’

December 1, 2012
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Book Review — ‘Shooting Hollywood’

"Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul." — Marilyn Monroe

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Director’s Cliched Progressive Politics Delayed Release of ‘Lincoln’

November 19, 2012
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Director’s Cliched Progressive Politics Delayed Release of ‘Lincoln’

Until recently, it was a mystery as to why Steven Spielberg could never successfully pull the trigger on a truly great dramatic picture. Until October that is, when he premiered 'Lincoln' at the New York Film Festival. As it turns out, the reason is quite simple - the guy's not a deep thinker. A capably talented maker of action-adventure movies (if readers forget 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull') to be sure, but someone who daydreamed about reanimated dinosaurs and aliens during history and social studies…

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Spielberg’s Incomplete Lincoln

November 9, 2012
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Spielberg’s Incomplete Lincoln

Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln' shows the nation's sixteenth president as a war president who broke the back of slavery, but also a roguish pol who reveled in duplicity, skullduggery, and chicanery. Regrettably, Spielberg presents these aforementioned warts as presidential strengths rather than weaknesses. Say what you will about the lofty goal of correcting a glaring human-rights oversight of the Founding Fathers, the film begs the question of whether the admirable ends justified the underhanded means. No matter that the fixers are a lovable bunch of rascals…

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