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CATS: MUSIC MINUS MAGIC

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
6228

Some things shouldn’t be tampered with. I enjoyed Cats onstage, where the theatrical experience worked its magic to great effect. The new film never swept me up as I hoped it might; for all its rich ingredients it felt like a soufflé that wouldn’t rise. It isn’t for lack of effort. The cast, music and dance, production design, and elaborate visual effects are all top-shelf. But only two ingredients gave me real, deep-down pleasure: the performances of Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat and Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy. McKellen delivers his poignant song like the stage veteran he is in real life, with a wink in the direction of Bert Lahr. There are younger, shinier performers in the ensemble but they can’t hold a candle…

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BOMBSHELL: MUCH ADO

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
5564

It’s not uncommon for me to stare at a beautiful woman like Charlize Theron, but in Bombshell I was fixated on her face for the wrong reason: I kept trying to figure out why it looked odd. That’s because her features were altered to make her resemble former Fox News “star” Megyn Kelly. The changes are subtle but I found them distracting, all the more so because I have little acquaintance with the high-profile anchorwoman. Did the resemblance have to be so exact for Theron’s performance to be convincing? The film as a whole suffers from tunnel vision. Charles Randolph’s screenplay is so tightly focused on happenings at Fox News that if you didn’t follow the players in this real-life drama—and I didn’t—you may find it difficult…

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NEW AND NOTABLE FILM BOOKS December 2019

Books Leonard Maltin
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There’s never enough time to read, so please consider this a survey rather than a series of reviews. I’ve only included books that interest or intrigue me.     THE MOVIE MUSICAL! by Jeanine Basinger (Knopf) In addition to teaching several generations of filmmakers at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Basinger has written a handful of essential books on classic Hollywood including The Star Machine, Silent Stars, and A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960. Her latest is an expansive (634-page) treatise on musicals: a heady mixture of history, personal experience, and pointed opinions. This is the book I most look forward to reading cover-to-cover over the holidays, and I know I won’t be disappointed.       THE GROVE MUSIC GUIDE TO AMERICAN FILM MUSIC Edited…

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THE ULTIMATE PRE-CODE MOVIE

Leonard Maltin
5847

If there hadn’t been a Production Code crackdown brewing in Hollywood before The Story of Temple Drake (1933), this astonishing film might have tipped the scales. Based on William Faulkner’s sensational novel Sanctuary, it’s the story of a carefree Southern belle who teases men—until she is raped and turned into a sex slave. The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray release provides everything you need to appreciate the unprecedented nature of this material and how potent it remains today. I’m posting two pieces from 1933 that should be of interest: a publicity piece about Jack La Rue, who plays the notorious Trigger (named Popeye in the novel) and the first paragraphs of a review in the trade journal Motion Picture Herald.     Miriam Hopkins is excellent in the leading role.…

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KNIVES OUT: A SHARP BLEND OF COMEDY AND WHODUNIT

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
10024

Writer-director Rian Johnson has only made a handful of films, from his high-school noir debut Brick to the most recent Star Wars epic. Now he’s applied his ingenuity to an old-fashioned whodunit. As a longtime Agatha Christie fan he’s called on deep knowledge of the genre to craft his own, original “perfect crime” movie and laced it with humor from the very start. The tone is set by Johnson’s casting, beginning with Daniel Craig as a cocky private eye with an accent one character disparagingly compares to Foghorn Leghorn. Craig seems to be having the time of his life indulging in this role, aiding the mostly-clueless detectives on the case, and the feeling is infectious. Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, and Michael Shannon are the key family…

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THE TWO POPES: ONE OF THIS YEAR’S FINEST

In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
3742

One of the most unpredictable and satisfying films of the year, The Two Popes represents a collaboration of great talents: writer Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour), director Fernando Mereilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener), and two of the finest actors on the planet, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. The filmmakers disarm us with this sly piece of historical speculation about a meeting between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis in 2012, at an unprecedented moment in history when Benedict announced that he was stepping down, making way for a liberal successor. McCarten’s screenplay is witty and sharply observed. Benedict is under fire for financial improprieties at the Vatican and willful ignorance of the sex scandals that plague the Catholic Church. Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina…

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THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS YOU: SERIALS

Leonard Maltin
3701

I came of age after Hollywood stopped making serials, but I still got to see a few during the waning days of Saturday kiddie matinees and I’ve never lost my fondness for them. That’s why I’m happy that VCI Entertainment has released a handful of newly-restored serials on DVD and Blu-ray—the same titles that Turner Classic Movies is showing in rotation on their TCM Watch app: Jungle Queen, The Vanishing Shadow, Lost City of the Jungle, Tailspin Tommy and the Great Air Mystery, et al. VCI (www.vcientertainment.com) has long offered public domain titles but I’ve just watched their 2K restoration of The Roaring West (1935) starring Buck Jones and it’s become one of my favorites. Most serial aficionados agree that Republic Pictures made the best chapter-plays, but this Universal…

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