Monday: How I Met Your Mother
We were a little disappointed by Saturday Night Live this weekend when Neil Patrick Harris hosted. Not because he wasn’t hilarious-he was!-but because they did too much Doogie and not enough Barney, Mr. Harris’ slimy, yet weirdly charming womanizer on HIMYM. Over the last few years, this Friends-ish pal comedy has Read More
Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima has been made from a screenplay by Japanese-American first-timer Iris Yamashita, which was based on Tsuyoko Yoshida’s Picture Letters from Commander in Chief Tadamichi Kuribayashi, and the story by Ms. Yamashita and Paul Haggis. The “picture letters” in question are shown being dug up at the beginning and end Read More
When Louis B. Mayer saw Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, he exploded, “How dare this young man, Wilder, bite the hand that feeds him?” (Wilder, who was present, replied, “I am Wilder and go fuck yourself.”) As Joan Crawford in the much-ridiculed Mommie Dearest, Faye Dunaway doesn’t so much bite the hand that feeds her as Read More
Remember when movies mattered?
I do—vaguely. Cast your mind back 30 or more years to a time when the next Arthur Penn movie, the next Coppola, the next Mazursky or Ashby or Bogdanovich excited burning anticipation, and the question of whether or not Billy Wilder could pull it together and mount a comeback (he couldn’t) Read More
Remember when movies mattered?
I do—vaguely. Cast your mind back 30 or more years to a time when the next Arthur Penn movie, the next Coppola, the next Mazursky or Ashby or Bogdanovich excited burning anticipation, and the question of whether or not Billy Wilder could pull it together and mount a comeback Read More
David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, from a screenplay by Jack Olson, based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, may go down in movie history as the suspenseful thriller in which the bedeviled-by-his past, virtually schizophrenic hero, Tom Stall/Joey Cusack (played magnificently by Viggo Mortensen), makes Batman, Spider-Man and Superman look Read More
Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, from a screenplay by John August, Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson, with original music by Danny Elfman, marks the 20th year of Mr. Burton’s consistently eccentric endeavors with films that have found favor with young audiences, and with admirers of all ages for the strange, morbid Read More
Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, from a screenplay by John August, Pamela Pettler and Caroline Thompson, with original music by Danny Elfman, marks the 20th year of Mr. Burton’s consistently eccentric endeavors with films that have found favor with young audiences, and with admirers of all ages for the strange, Read More
Wes Craven’s Red Eye, from a story by Carl Ellsworth and Dan Foos, happily emerges as the kind of movie that people say Hollywood can’t or won’t make anymore—that is, an efficient thriller unburdened by any intimations of social significance or subtextual grandiosity. The best thing about it is that its tingling narrative is never Read More
Wes Craven’s Red Eye, from a story by Carl Ellsworth and Dan Foos, happily emerges as the kind of movie that people say Hollywood can’t or won’t make anymore—that is, an efficient thriller unburdened by any intimations of social significance or subtextual grandiosity. The best thing about it is that its tingling narrative is never Read More
