‘ARMAGEDDON TIME’ IS BEAUTIFUL
The ability to remember details and summon emotions from one’s childhood is a gift, especially in the hands of a filmmaker as talented as James Gray. In Armageddon Time he fearlessly lays bare a crucial incident from his adolescence that haunts…
HARPO, HITCHCOCK, AND THE OSCAR: NEW AND NOTABLE BOOKS Oct 2022
SPEAKING OF HARPO by Susan Marx with Robert S. Bader (Applause) As someone who gobbled up every word in Harpo Marx’s memorable autobiography Harpo Speaks, I reveled in this posthumous publication by his widow Susan. Where else in the year 2022…
AMSTERDAM: AN ALMOST-GOOD MOVIE
Look, I get it. It isn’t easy to craft an original screenplay, introducing an audience to newly-minted characters worth caring about, then building a three-act structure that makes perfect sense. David O. Russell has had more success than many…
PRESTON STURGES’ WATERLOO: ‘THE GREAT MOMENT’
You may have overlooked Kino Lorber’s February Blu-ray release of The Great Moment (1944), starring Joel McCrea and Betty Field. It’s not an especially well-known title from the Paramount library, but it inspired Constantine Nasr, who produces bonus content for many…
WHERE FILM BUFFS GET THEIR FILL
When I was a kid my incipient love of film history was fueled by the fact that local TV stations in the New York City area had hours of time to fill and stockpiles of old movies to do…
THE GOOD BOSS: GOOD GOING
Javier Bardem essays the title role in The Good Boss, and that is how his character would describe himself. He inherited from his father a factory that makes scales—all sizes and kinds—and presides over a hundred or so workers that he…
ABBOTT & COSTELLO, HARPO MARX AND MORE ON BLU-RAY
JACK AND THE BEANSTALK (ClassicFlix) While I would never tout this as a great Abbott and Costello comedy, the vast array of bonus features on this release supersedes my interest in the film itself. Kudos to Bob Furmanek and…
