Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

THE DONUT KING: AN IRRESISTIBLE HUMAN INTEREST STORY

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews November 10, 2020

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I’ll admit I never gave much thought to the fact that here in Southern Californians we have a disproportionately high number of donut shops, almost all of them owned and operated by Cambodians. Nor did I realize that one man was responsible for this phenomenon—the same guy who introduced the now-ubiquitous pink cardboard box. Alice Gu’s film introduces us to Ted Ngoy, a refugee who escaped from a hellish, war-torn country in 1975, came to the U.S. with no money or friends. He not only made a success of himself; he shared his good fortune with scores of relatives and friends. His secret: hard work in the extreme, a willingness to learn, and sheer determination. It’s an irresistible human-interest story… but it’s only the first…

REMEMBERING SEAN CONNERY

Leonard Maltin October 31, 2020

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Sean Connery is dead at age 90. Life goes on, but stars like him don’t come along very often. I’ll never forget watching From Russia With Love when it was new—the coolest movie I’d ever seen. After that, it was difficult for me to accept anyone else as agent 007. Over the span of years he finally shed that alter ego and gave life to many other memorable characters. I only spoke to the actor a few times, but each meeting was memorable. The encounter I will never forget came when I was assigned to cover his hand-and-footprint ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 1999 to promote the movie Entrapment, which costarred newcomer Catherine Zeta-Jones. As we stood in the famous forecourt of Grauman’s, I asked what…

ON THE ROCKS: ESCAPISM AT ITS BEST

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews October 28, 2020

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Bill Murray is in the enviable position of having talented filmmakers writing scripts with him in mind. Sofia Coppola struck gold with him some years ago with Lost in Translation and has come through with another appealing vehicle, On the Rocks. Murray occupies a unique place among movie stars. His quirky appeal has stood the test of time—it’s been forty years since Caddyshack! He’s not a one-trick pony, yet his screen persona is so potent that he seems to be doing what actors like Cary Grant and John Wayne used to be accused of: playing himself. That ignorant assessment was an insult to their talent, and it’s no less true of Murray. He is acting in roles that have been hand-crafted to play to his strengths. Coppola has cast him…

RARE SILENT FILMS ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

Blu-Ray/DVD Leonard Maltin October 20, 2020

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First, I want to spread the word that the good folks at Film Preservation Society (www.filmpreservationsociety.org) are offering a Blu-ray copy of the 1925 Richard Dix comedy Too Many Kisses, which features the screen debut of Harpo Marx. The entertaining feature stars Dix, Frances Howard (later Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn), William Powell, and Harpo in a brief but memorable appearance. An original piano score has been provided by Harpo’s son Bill Marx, a Juilliard graduate who’s been a professional musician his entire life. Proceeds benefit the FPS, which has undertaken a massive project to restore all of D.W. Griffith’s Biograph shorts from the best available materials. You’ll see a sample (A Child’s Impulse, starring Mary Pickford) on the Blu-ray, along with The House That Shadows Built, a 1931 Paramount…

CARY GRANT: A BRILLIANT DISGUISE by Scott Eyman

Books Leonard Maltin October 20, 2020

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CARY GRANT: A BRILLIANT DISGUISE by Scott Eyman (Simon and Schuster) Over the years, it’s been said, people told Cary Grant they wished they could be like him and the star responded, “So do I.” This is more than an anecdote; it’s the bittersweet truth about a superb actor whose greatest performance was the one he gave for half a century: convincing people that he was just like the debonair fellow he played so effortlessly onscreen. As Scott Eyman puts it, “Cary Grant was an incrementally devised artificial construct, whereas Archie Leach was the authentic man. Archie had no particular problem being Archie, but playing Cary Grant would easily provoke the emotional equivalent of flop sweat at the risk of being exposed as an impostor.”…

NEW AND NOTABLE FILM BOOKS September 2020

Books Leonard Maltin September 24, 2020

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HITCHCOCK’S CALIFORNIA: VISTA VISIONS FROM THE CAMERA EYE by Robert Jones, Dan Auiler, and Aimee Sinclair; introduction by Bruce Dern; afterword by Dorothy Herrmann (Middlebrow Books) At first glance I thought this striking, oversized book was a series of re-creations of scenes from Hitchcock films. That’s not quite right. It is a book of images by two talented photographers who were inspired by The Master of Suspense. Some of them are replicas of shots from such famous films as Vertigo and Psycho, but many simply try to capture the mood those scenes evoke. Knowing that they were shot on film in a “widescreen” format makes them all the more effective. Jones explains his near-obsession with Hitchcock in an interesting conversation with Hitchcock scholar Auiler and compares photographic…

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 30, 2020

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I’m a sucker for Charles Dickens, and I must confess I came to him through movies. It was a showing of the 1935 David Copperfield that inspired me to read the source novel when I was a boy; then I became a Dickens buff. I am also predisposed to like anything devised by Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, In the Loop, Veep and The Death of Stalin. Blending the sharp edge of Iannucci’s satire with Dickens’ broad-ranging social commentary might seem an odd mélange, but there is much to enjoy in this unconventional adaptation. By casting Dev Patel in the leading role and ignoring skin color and ethnicity, Iannucci is packing a 19th century message in a 21st century bottle. Does it make sense that Asian, Indian, and English…

MERCHANT IVORY: A UNIQUE LOOK BEHIND THE SCENES

WHAT’S NEW ON DVD/BLU-RAY/4K IN AUGUST

I’M GOING UNIVERSAL NEXT MONTH

MY PENGUIN FRIEND

NEW AND NOTABLE BOOKS: FROM CHAPLIN TO ERROL FLYNN August 2024

NEW ON 4K/BLU-RAY/DVD IN JULY

MODERNISM, INC.—A GOOD DOCUMENTARY BY DESIGN