What happens a career hits a dead-end? I was thinking about Eric Clapton the other day. In the early 1973, Clapton was addicted to drugs and his career was in the dumps. Not very many people remember those times, in part because he rebuilt his career, and his guitar legacy only grew. In America, second … More Left for Dead: Amazing Career Resurrections
Talk about a difficult film to watch. In 1968, mass shootings were rare, although that was the year of two assassinations: Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Targets was conceptually influenced by the 1966 Texas University tower shooter Charles Wittman, who killed 15 people and injured 31, after first killing his wife and mother. … More Targets, a film by Peter Bogdanovich (film review)
Living (2022) snuck out into theaters with not much fanfare. That’s not unusual in the post-Covid film world. Nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actor, Best Screenplay), it is one of lead actor Bill Nighy’s best roles. Living refers to the fact that Mr. Williams (Nighy), a county bureaucrat in 1950s London, has only six … More Living (film review) and my favorite Bill Nighy films
Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and now Liam Neeson. Actors who have played private eye Philip Marlowe. Snappy dialogue, obtuse characters, flashback narrative, stylish photography, world weary detective – required elements of an old fashioned gum-shoe detective. Cigarette smoke everywhere, hard dames, infidelity, drinking on the job, obscene … More Marlowe (film review)
Fifty years later, the love story of John Lennon and May Pang is presented onscreen. The Lost Weekend, A Love Story (2023) is a long-form telling of their story in film clips, interviews and news stories. Pang has written about her and Lennon’s time together and appeared on many talk shows in the early 1990s … More The Lost Weekend, A Love Story (film review)
Tom Hanks and Billy Crystal are two of my favorite actors, but I have a question. How the f@&$ did they get so old?! Hanks and Crystal play geezers, at the end of their lives. These are dissimilar characters, but similar stories, and each has a degree of sentimentality. Each film incorporates flashback of happier … More Tom Hanks and Billy Crystal: grumpy old men
Some actors and directors end their fine careers on a sour note. Sometimes the films are awful, but equally disappointing is when the films are – boring. The that comes to me about last films is – sad. The end of a long or briefly successful career should conclude with a meaningful or well-received project. … More Last Films: Disappointing Final Films of Actors and Directors
I toyed with seeing this film for a few months, the preview looked intriguing, but I figured I might have to see it alone. I doubted that my companion would be up for this strange-looking little film. Surprisingly, she was, but her interest quickly waned as the film very slowly unwound. The Banshees of Inisherin … More The Banshees of Inisherin (2022): Film Review
How can a film written and directed by David O. Russell and starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Robert De Niro and a boatload of other worthy actors fail so miserably? Well, in Hollywood it happens all the time. High concept films hit and miss, sometimes rising from the dead on video or streaming. It could … More Amsterdam (2022): Film Review
A couple of months ago I noticed that The Good House was coming to a local art house movie theater. I had no idea what it was about, but it looked like a mature love story starring Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline. The film came and went within a week or two, which is the … More The Good House (2022): Small Budget Films
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