Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

A CELEBRATION OF CLASSIC COMEDY

Blu-Ray/DVD Leonard Maltin August 26, 2023

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This is a great time to be a fan of vintage comedy, from the silent era onward. A brace of new Blu-ray restorations and books will make life a little brighter for both the novice and the aficionado. Add to that a celebratory screening of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last on its hundredth anniversary at the Academy Museum this coming Sunday and see how much there is to cheer about. LAUREL & HARDY, YEAR ONE: THE NEWLY RESTORED 1927 SILENTS (Flicker Alley) This collection, which was previewed on a big screen at the recent San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is the result of many years’ effort but definitely worth the wait. The original negatives of Laurel and Hardy’s silent short subjects are long gone, but Serge Bromberg, Eric…

BOTTOMS: COMEDY FROM A FRESH NEW VOICE

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 26, 2023

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Writer-director Emma Seligman graduated from NYU just six years ago but she’s fast becoming a media darling. Two years ago her debut feature, Shiva Baby, earned her the John Cassavetes prize at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and made her a player on the New York indie scene. Her new film, Bottoms, is a campy, absurdist comedy about two gay high school friends (Rachel Sennott, star of Shiva Baby) and Ayo Edibiri (from television’s The Bear and Theater Camp) who are such social outcasts that they impulsively start a fight club, which leads to consequences they couldn’t anticipate. Bottoms plays with the tropes of such films as But I’m a Cheerleader and Clueless, but they are filtered through a distinctly different lens. Seligman wrote the screenplay with Sennott; they have no problem…

LIAM NEESON IS AT IT AGAIN IN ‘RETRIBUTION’

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 25, 2023

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Acting careers cannot be charted or predicted; I’ve always thought that the best outcomes are a result of good choices and good luck in roughly equal measure. How the brooding Irish actor Liam Neeson wound up in globe-trotting action movies is one for the books…but that has become his specialty in the years since starring in Taken (2008). Fortunately, he has had ample opportunity to show us all that he has a robust sense of humor. But for now, it’s back to business. In Retribution he plays a successful but self-involved businessman who uses his wits—and sheer guts—to outsmart an unknown assailant who has planted a bomb in his car, which he drives around Berlin, with his two children trapped in the back seat. If that premise seems laughable…

HELEN MIRREN DISAPPEARS IN ‘GOLDA’

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 25, 2023

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There is no trace of Helen Mirren in Golda, and that’s the way it ought to be. To say that she becomes the fabled Israeli Prime Minister is a mild understatement, but this is no mere stunt of makeup, hairstyling and costuming. Those components enable Mirren to focus completely on the character she is portraying. It should come as no surprise that she delivers a great performance. Golda is not a biopic, but rather a portrait of a world leader during one fateful chapter in her life: the Yom Kippur war of 1973, which forced her to make difficult, life-and-death decisions and answer for them later on. I remember the feeling of shock and outrage that swept through the American Jewish community when Egypt launched its attack on…

‘BETWEEN TWO WORLDS’ IS WORTH SEEING

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 14, 2023

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It’s never a waste of time to watch Juliette Binoche, and this film, which screened at Cannes in 2921, is definitely worth seeing. It is inspired by Florence Aubena’s best-selling book about her experiences posing as an uneducated single woman who takes the only job she can find—and qualifies for—as a housecleaner. (Even in the English-language subtitles, it’s amusing to see the euphemistic ways the job is described.) With no airs or even a hint of condescension Binoche joins the ranks of (mostly) women who clean toilets, make beds, and endure punishing hours and uncaring employers so they can pay their rent and put food on the table. Although she bonds with a handful of coworkers she remains a loner, and we soon learn the…

JULES: BEN KINGSLEY RULES

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 14, 2023

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Ben Kingsley disappears into every character he plays, and the quiet senior citizen he becomes in Jules is no exception. The fact that he has a mop of hair and no trace of a British accent should come as no surprise; this is an actor who has played everyone from Mahatma Gandhi to Salvador Dali, not to mention his wide range of fictional characters in films as diverse as The Wackness and House of Sand and Fog. In Jules, writer Gavin Steckler and director Marc Turtletaub have given him a part he can play with, an understated senior citizen whose life has fallen into a routine. He shows up at his hometown’s weekly council meeting, where he repeats the same suggestions he has made countless times before, and tends to…

NEW AND NOTABLE BOOKS FOR SUMMER 2023

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 4, 2023

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THE LAST ACTION HEROES: THE TRIUMPHS, FLOPS AND FEUDS OF HOLLYWOOD’S KINGS OF CARNAGE by Nick De Semlyen (Crown) There was a time, not so many years ago, when certain names were a guarantee of box-office gold. Stallone and Schwarzenegger led the pack, soon to be joined by Van Damme, Norris, Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, Jackie Chan, and the unlikely Bruce Willis. Author De Semlyen traces each individual’s career trajectory and more important, places it within the fabric of audience fervor for simplistic action moviemaking. As a longtime contributor to Empire, the world’s best movie magazine (which he now edits) he had mano a mano experiences with most of these outsized personalities and blends his observations with those of writers, directors, producers and others who made their films. He seasons…