Archive for Movies & TV

About the Movie Ratings

February 13, 2006 / / 2 comments

Some people give stars, usually from 0 to 4 stars, with a four-star movie being fabuloso. But then, reviewers find that a five-level scale isn’t nuanced enough, so they end up giving half-stars, which makes it a ten-level scale.

So I figured, why not grade from one to ten? Everyone who went to school in the US understands grades; they understand getting “a hundred” on a test is great, and getting ninety is still damn fine.

In my mind, 9s and 10s are “must-see.” 7s and 8s are “see.”6 is “probably see” and 5 is “probably don’t see” and after that, don’t waste your time.

Monday Movie Review: Capote

February 13, 2006 / / 2 comments

Capote (2005) 9/10
Author Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), accompanied by his friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), travels to Kansas to research the brutal slaying of a family of four. He befriends residents, investigators, and eventually the killers while writing the “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood.

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Monday Movie Review: I Married a Witch

February 6, 2006 / / 4 comments

I Married a Witch (1942) 5/10
In the 1600s in New England, Jonathan Wooley (Frederic March) condemns a witch (Veronica Lake) and her father to burn. She curses Wooley and all his descendents to be unlucky in love. In 1942 a chance lightning bolt frees father and daughter from their supernatural prison, and they decide to plague Wooley’s descendent (also March) on the eve of his wedding and as he’s about to be elected governor.

I have a problem with dumb comic fantasies: I get caught up in the plot. I want it to make sense; or at least enough sense so that I stop worrying about whether or not it makes sense. And this one just utterly failed on that level. » Read more..

Liberal Hollywood

February 3, 2006 / / 9 comments

In a previous post, I suggest that Westerns are an iconically conservative movie genre, and suggested The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as something like the conservative movie. I wondered what an iconically liberal genre might be, and what movies were quintessentially liberal.

Despite all that “liberal Hollywood” talk, it hasn’t been an easy exercise. Lots of genres tend to embody conservative values; many “law & order” action movies, all those Rambo and Death Wish things, and there’s a strong punish-the-slut current in most horror.

In the previous post and its comments section, we came up with a short list of liberal movies:

  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • 12 Angry Men
  • All the President’s Men
  • Inherit the Wind
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  • Silkwood
  • Dances with Wolves

Over dinner, I thought of a few more:

  • The China Syndrome
  • Erin Brokovich
  • Norma Rae

(and here comes the one I think is quintessential)

  • The Grapes of Wrath

This starts to look like the courtroom drama is the liberal genre, with the battle for an underdog’s rights being the liberal theme.

So, now it’s your turn. What do you think are the quintessential liberal genre(s) and movie(s)?

Freedom is on the March. With stirrups jangling.

February 3, 2006 / / 4 comments

One of the things that drives me (and indeed, many on the left) batshit crazy about those on the right is that they claim to love freedom yet seem to hate any displays of that freedom. I’ve wondered my entire life what, exactly, conservatives define as “liberty.” They hate the ACLU! How can you love freedom, and hate the defense of civil liberties? How can you love freedom, and applaud restrictions on free speech, on free assembly, or on a free press?

This latest rant on my part arises from a combination of two news stories. Not the news stories, really, but the wingnut reaction. First, the ongoing revelations about the NSA spying on ordinary Americans without a warrant. Now, some right wing folks understand the gravity of this. But the wingnut reaction in many places is more or less: Rah, cheer, we’re defending freedom.

Then there’s Cindy Sheehan’s arrest at the State of the Union. The wingnuts I was conversing with (on a message board) were adamant that it was right, and good, and proper, that her freedom be curtailed at the SOTU, because after all, she was breaking the law! (And not one of them bothered even to backpeddle, let alone apologize, once the police admitted she wasn’t.)

So my question is, at it has always been, how do the right wing define freedom? And I think I figured it out.

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Munich gets a nod

January 31, 2006 / / Comments Off on Munich gets a nod

Unexpected: Munich gets a nomination for Best Picture. Only one I’ve seen. I suppose if I got out of the house more…

Monday Movie Review: Munich

January 30, 2006 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Munich

Munich 10/10
After Black September murders eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics in 1972, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier authorizes the creation of a covert assassination squad to avenge the deaths.

Steven Spielberg has created a masterful work. It is moving without being manipulative, disturbing without being grotesque; it shows great restraint and bravado excess.

The arguments against this film seem to be three: That it is too anti-Israel, that it is too pro-Israel, and that it is historically false. One would hope the very fact that the first two arguments co-exist would cancel them out, but that’s probably optimistic. » Read more..

Monday Movie Reviews: Sunset Boulevard & The Quiet American

January 23, 2006 / / 2 comments

Sunset Boulevard 10/10
Joe Gillis (William Holden) is a down and out screenwriter until he meets former silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). Soon he agrees to work for her, lying to himself about how far his “kept man” arrangement will go.

In the Five Random Facts meme, I said I’d never seen Sunset Boulevard, so it’s only fair I review it now. Besides, the next film review recalls this one, so there you are.

There are three steps to the foreshadowing that creates Sunset Boulevard’s mystique.

First, Sunset Boulevard opens with a dead man in a swimming pool. Because the movie is so famous, and the opening shot so oftened discussed, I knew it was Joe (William Holden), the film’s narrator. I wonder what director Billy Wilder intended, though, because the distortion of the water makes the dead man’s face unclear. Did film audiences know it was Holden?

Soon Joe finds his way to Norma’s mansion. In the second tip, he references Miss Havisham, we see Norma coming before Joe does, and we know she is loony, trapped by choice in her home, and willing to hold others prisoner.

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Sex-Role Holiday

January 19, 2006 / / 2 comments

Last night I watched Roman Holiday. It’s wonderful, it’s glorious, oh my Audrey, blah blah blah.

I have been reading a lot of feminist blogs lately, so issues of gender roles and patriarchal assumptions are much on my mind. I started looking at Roman Holiday through that lens.
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Monday Movie Reviews: Down With Love

January 16, 2006 / / 4 comments

Down With Love (2003) 6/10
In mod mod mod 1962, Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) writes a self-help book that advises women to give up love, demand equality in the workplace, and have sex “like a man; a la carte.??? Famous writer/ladies man Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) determines to trick Novak into falling in love with him so that he can write an exposé.

Down With Love is a pretty movie, with bright colors and bold costumes, in exactly the way 1962 was pretty and bold. » Read more..

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