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ONLY THE BRAVE: TRUE TO ITS PROMISE

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
9799

I wasn’t anxious to see Only the Brave, as I knew it would be upsetting. What I didn’t expect was a film that would make me care so deeply about its heroes, the members of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots. As director Joseph Kosinski told my class at USC, “I wanted to focus on how they lived, not how they died.” True to his word, he and his team have crafted a film that is genuinely uplifting. And I can’t think of another actor who could have played the leading role better than Josh Brolin. You will learn, as I did, exactly what this close-knit group accomplished in their brief time together. These Arizona firefighters strove to be certified as “hot shots,” an elite core of…

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78/52: EXPLORING HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER SCENE

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
11157

How many movie sequences have taken on the mythic power of the shower scene in Psycho? Few, if any, I would say. It is for that reason that Alexandre O. Philippe has been able to build an entire feature film around this legendary moment in movie (and pop culture) history. I found it mesmerizing. The title refers to 78 camera set-ups and 52 cuts, but 78/52 deals with more than just that landmark scene: it explains why Psycho was a game-changer for Hollywood and for audiences. Some of this has become movie lore but none of it seems redundant in the context of this valuable documentary. Peter Bogdanovich provides a first-hand account of seeing Psycho when it was new. (Ever the showman, Hitchcock refused to allow moviegoers to enter the theater after…

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THE SNOWMAN: NO THRILLS, NO CHILLS

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
6448

It’s often a sign of trouble when there are three prominent screenwriters credited for a movie, especially one that’s based on a successful novel. The fact that The Snowman also features separate credits for two editors (one of them Thelma Schoonmaker, executive producer Martin Scorsese’s longtime colleague) doesn’t bode well, either. These warning signs accurately foretell a bad movie. Michael Fassbender stars in this muddled adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s best-selling thriller about police detective Harry Hole and the hunt for a brutal and insidious serial killer. Set in Norway, with atmospheric shots of the snowy landscape and isolation of its locations, the screenplay also tries—and fails—to interest us in Hole’s relationship with his ex-girlfriend (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her teenage son. I couldn’t have cared less. I’m hard…

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WONDERSTRUCK: NOT WHAT I HOPED FOR

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
5301

I wanted to love this movie and had every reason to think I would. Wonderstruck wowed many critics on the festival circuit, but somehow it never drew me in. Much as I wanted to be engaged, I remained aloof from the story and characters. It’s not for lack of effort on the part of director Todd Haynes or screenwriter Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret), who adapted his own novel. They have created two worlds fifty years apart and provided clues to the connection between them. We are challenged to put the pieces together as the parallel stories develop. Oakes Fegley, who was so good in Pete’s Dragon, plays a boy who desperately misses his mother (Michelle Williams), who has died in an auto accident. She frustrated…

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CLOSE-UP ON HENRY FONDA AND JAMES STEWART

Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
15638

HANK & JIM: THE FIFTY YEAR FRIENDSHIP OF HENRY FONDA AND JAMES STEWART by Scott Eyman (Simon & Schuster) You may think you’ve read all you need to about Henry Fonda and James Stewart. After all, they are two of the most celebrated actors of the 20th century. But being the great biographer he is, Scott Eyman has dug beneath the surface to paint rich, layered portraits of both men, along with the story of their extraordinary fifty-year friendship. This is the latest notch in Eyman’s formidable gun belt, having penned definitive biographies of John Wayne, Cecil B. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch, and other Hollywood giants. Consider these paragraphs from the introductory chapter: “Fonda was a closet intellectual and perfectionist, which inevitably meant he carried a residual…

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FACES PLACES: IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
4989

I’ve exhausted my thesaurus trying to find new words to describe Faces Places: “charming” and “disarming” seem too obvious and overused. Suffice it to say that this collaboration between photographer and installation artist JR (age 33) and beloved French filmmaker Agnès Varda (age 88) is inspired and irresistible. On the surface, their movie is simplicity itself: two highly creative people, celebrating their newfound friendship, set off on a series of adventures. Their goal is to visit out-of-the-way villages in France, meet interesting and colorful people, and ask them to participate in JR’s photographic exhibits: gigantic black & white photos pasted on the walls of barns, old buildings, a stack of shipping containers, a factory water tank, and the like. In recent years Varda has made a…

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PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN: STRANGER THAN FICTION

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
6823

The biggest mystery surrounding this film is how its story has remained in the shadows for so many years. I’m sure comic book devotees have known about it, but the details are so juicy I’m surprised no one has dramatized it before. The bullet points are intriguing on the surface: Wonder Woman was created by a former Harvard professor who also happened to invent the lie detector. He and his wife (also a professor) took in a research assistant who turned out to be the niece of proto-feminist Margaret Sanger…and both husband and wife fell in love with her. Their three-way “marriage” and keen interest in bondage ostracized them from mainstream society but inspired Marston to invent Wonder Woman and turn his comic book into…

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