Return of The VVitch!! MARY POPPINS RETURNS is the sequel to 1964’s MARY POPPINS, where Julie Andrews played a witch who fell from the sky to nanny a British family during their hardship. In this new story, produced 54 years after the original (yet is set about 25 years after the original’s events), Emily Blunt plays the same Poppins witch, … Read More
THE IRON LADY
The Mannish, The Myth, The Legend. The Soviets dubbed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher “Iron Lady” as an insult. Now, in a swoon of reappropriation – like headbanger, jarhead, Dead-head, gay, Yankee, Obamacare – the epithet is reclaimed as a tribute. If you watch THE IRON LADY with no prior knowledge of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, don’t worry, you’ll leave the … Read More
JULIE AND JULIA
The Cookie Monster Cometh. Before Wolfgang Puck, before Emeril, before Iron Chef – there was Julia Child. But which came first: this American pioneer and monster of home cooking, or Monty Python’s Pepperpots? Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) ululates her way through this exceptional little quasi-biopic sounding like Graham Chapman in a dress. JULIE AND JULIA parallels Julia Child’s life … Read More
IT’S COMPLICATED
Glengarry Glen Ruse. Writer-director Nancy Meyers discovers in her late 50s what all men realize in their early 20s – that you can ALWAYS go back to previous panty. And it’s not wrong or right or immoral or unethical. As long as you do it behind everyone’s back. Alec Baldwin shows us how to Always Be Closing in IT’S COMPLICATED, … Read More
MANHATTAN
Allen’s Town. On the island city of MANHATTAN, Woody Allen’s masterful study of how every person is an island. Opening montage is enough to make you want to move there; a scintillating montage of the Manhattan skyline, the streets, the people, the shops and streetside vendors, from the scum to the scenic, Allen’s narration starting out purposely melodramatic and settling … Read More
DOUBT
Sinfully Good. DOUBT lives up to its title so staunchly that we cannot do anything but. About a Catholic priest, Father Flynn (the magnificent Philip Seymour Hoffman), accused by a nun, Sister Aloysius (the also-magnificent Meryl Streep) of inappropriate relations with a grade-school boy. No evidence, no proof, no witnesses, no reports. Yet Aloysius has no doubt. Caught in the … Read More
LIONS FOR LAMBS
Roaring Thunder for Republican Muttonheads. Lest we forget: Robert Redford once brought down Satan Nixon in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN; in LIONS FOR LAMBS, he goes for the neck-wattle of Demon W. Bush. Razor-sharp writing, controlled direction, magnificent performances, LIONS FOR LAMBS is a wake up call to America – wake up and smell the lunatic euphemisms the Republican administration … Read More
THE RIVER WILD
Up The Creek… Kevin Bacon is definitely one of those good-guy actors who can pull off a sinister performance when called upon by a lusterless script. In THE RIVER WILD, he white-waters into mediocrity as the Bad Bacon, holding a family hostage to help him navigate Montana rapids after a heist. Is it TOO much of a coincidence that this … Read More
RENDITION
Lessons in Amerikan Euphemism. THE LIE: “America doesn’t torture.” THE PLOT: CIA authorizes kidnapping and torture of a suspected terrorist in a misguided attempt to thwart further terrorism. THE EUPHEMISM: “extraordinary rendition.” THE TRUTH: America DOES torture. All my life I’ve regarded the word “rendition” to mean “the act of rendering.” So how the hell does it come to mean … Read More