Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy

FROM ALBERT BROOKS TO BETTY GRABLE: A SURVEY OF DVDs AND BLU-RAYS

Film Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 7, 2017

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I am back on an exercise bike every morning, which gives me an opportunity to catch up with DVDs and Blu-rays. Obviously, I’m not going to screen Lawrence of Arabia this way, so I choose my discs carefully: in some cases I revisit movies I haven’t seen in years, or check out bonus features on new releases. One thing is clear; if I enjoy what I’m watching I don’t think so much about the drudgery of exercising. I devoured every moment of the extra material on Criterion’s new release of Lost in America (1985): Bob Weide’s relaxed, informative conversation with filmmaker and star Albert Brooks, plus interviews with costar Julie Hagerty, Brooks’s longtime manager Herb Nanas, and admirer and Broadcast News director James L. Brooks. I’ve been an Albert Brooks fanatic for…

WIND RIVER: A WINTRY FILM WORTHY OF SUMMER VIEWING

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 4, 2017

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Having scripted Sicario and Hell and High Water, Taylor Sheridan has taken on directorial duties as well with his new film Wind River and scored a solid hit. Jeremy Renner plays a man who works for the government fish and game department on an Indian reservation in Wyoming. He’s an expert marksman, but more important, he understands the territory he patrols and the people who live there, because he is one of them. Into this wintry and insular community comes an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) who is tasked with investigating the rape and murder of a teenage girl who was left for dead in the snow. She is a fish out of water and must lean on Renner to help her make headway in talking to the locals and gathering…

‘DETROIT’ OFFERS HINDSIGHT BUT LITTLE INSIGHT

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews August 4, 2017

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No one can sustain a gut-wrenching sequence quite like director Kathryn Bigelow, who brought us The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. The central set piece of Detroit is a long, excruciating exercise in mental and physical abuse by police officers who have isolated a handful of “suspects” during a night of riotous turmoil in 1967—exactly fifty years ago. We’ve already seen one of the officers (Will Poulter) being reprimanded by his superior for this kind of racist—and illegal—conduct, but that doesn’t deter him from pursuing his self-justified brand of justice. Yet when it’s all over, I can’t tell you what I’ve gained from the experience. It isn’t a shock to learn that there were abusive cops in Detroit fifty years ago or that their behavior is all too reminiscent…

REMEMBERING JUNE FORAY

Exclusive Journal Leonard Maltin July 26, 2017

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Little did I dream, when I began watching Rocky and his Friends and The Bullwinkle Show, that the day would dawn when I could call June Foray—the voice of Rocket J.Squirrel and Natasha Fatale—a friend. She was indomitable and seemingly indestructible, working into her 90s and winning an Emmy award in the midst of her 9th decade. Accepting the reality of her death, at age 99, will take some time. I first met her at the Zagreb Animation Festival halfway around the world in 1974. When my wife and I moved to Los Angeles we saw her more often; she even attended our daughter Jessie’s Bat Mitzvah. June loved what she did and loved to work, even if she didn’t always get credit. She dubbed …

‘DUNKIRK’ MISSES THE BIG PICTURE

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews July 21, 2017

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Dunkirk may be the most understated World War Two movie ever made. That doesn’t mean it’s anemic in depicting the horror of combat; quite the contrary. But in his effort to avoid the clichés and rah-rah patriotism of war movies past, writer-director Christopher Nolan has swung his pendulum to the other extreme. Dunkirk is based on one of the most remarkable episodes of the 20th century, when thousands of soldiers were evacuated from the French coastline by a flotilla of small sailing vessels. Nolan has chosen to tell this saga through a series of parallel incidents, focusing on individuals and downplaying the Big Picture. What’s missing, for me, is that macro-view of this extraordinary event. I didn’t expect a conventional history lesson from Nolan, but…

NITRATE CAN’T WAIT: IS HOPALONG CASSIDY DISINTEGRATING?

Journal Leonard Maltin July 19, 2017

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[My longtime friend Dick Bann, with whom I wrote a book on Our Gang years ago, had no training as a film archivist, but spent a number of years working with the late David Shepard at Blackhawk Films and then supervised the restoration of the Hal Roach film library in Los Angeles—for which he deserves our everlasting thanks. He has also been involved in the William Boyd estate and its Hopalong Cassidy holdings for many years, which prompted this recent missive. I thank Dick for giving me permission to reprint it here.] By Richard W. Bann In a prolonged absence from home, I was happily ensconced within film vaults holding the remnants of all the Hopalong Cassidy films My task was to conduct a…

FILM FESTIVAL DIARY: KARLOVY VARY

Journal Leonard Maltin July 18, 2017

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It’s been a while since I attended a major film festival outside the U.S., and I didn’t know what to expect at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. This venerable and prestigious event is a vast movie sampler, with films from around the globe and a natural emphasis on Czech and Eastern European countries. Yet on opening night the honorees were all American—Casey Affleck, Uma Thurman, and composer James Newton Howard—and the kickoff film was The Big Sick, introduced on video by its star and co-writer Kumail Nanjiani. No power on earth can rival the allure of a Hollywood movie star; that was reaffirmed at the end of the festival when Jeremy Renner came to town to introduce Wind River,…

WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN APRIL

CATCHING UP WITH BLU-RAYS

WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN MARCH

A NEW BOOK FROM MALTIN AND MALTIN

STOLEN FACES

A BIT OF CRUMPET

WHAT’S NEW ON 4K/BLU/DVD IN FEBRUARY

FROM ALBERT BROOKS TO BETTY GRABLE: A SURVEY OF DVDs AND BLU-RAYS

WIND RIVER: A WINTRY FILM WORTHY OF SUMMER VIEWING