Alfred Hitchcock’s first American project was his only film to win an Academy Award, and since it was for Best Picture, it was producer David O Selznick, not Hitchcock, who took home the statuette. In 1968 Hitchcock received the Irving … Continue reading
Jordan Belfort was the real-life founder of a mammoth corrupt stock brokerage that conned its clients out of hundreds of millions, for which he went to prison for a mere three years. (At least he got some jail time, unlike … Continue reading
My single most popular entry on this blog was a review of the Jesse Stone series of TV movies starring Tom Selleck. I’ve had dozens of comments on it, almost all from people wanting to see more of them. By … Continue reading
At the start of the second live-action Astérix and Obélix film (I reviewed the first one here), Caesar annoys Cleopatra (gorgeous Monica Bellucci) by telling her that Egyptian greatness is all in the past, so to prove him wrong she … Continue reading
One of my favorite things about high school French was reading a series of comics wittily written by René Goscinny (who tragically died in 1977 at the age of 51) and brilliantly illustrated by Albert Uderzo. The protagonists were Gauls … Continue reading
Alas, another sequel that doesn’t live up to the original, which wasn’t all that great to start with. (And he never once gets to say “Hammer time!” unless I missed it.) Natalie Portman apparently saw The Avengers (a much better … Continue reading
Reformed super-villain Gru is recruited to help a shadowy agency track down a super-villain of the unreformed sort, and in the course of this Gru acquires a girlfriend, an agent of the Anti-Villain League voiced by Kristen Wiig. I forget … Continue reading
Until earlier this year I’d somehow never heard of this Coen brothers movie about a physics professor in the upper Midwest of the 1960s who suddenly has to deal with a set of personal and professional crises. From my goyishe … Continue reading
Once again a family takes up residence in an isolated country house, and the family dog in particular is against the idea from the start. There are minor oddities, then bigger weirdnesses, then graver and graver threats, as if the … Continue reading
Some friends involved in minor crime (street-corner sales of dodgy goods, that kind of thing) in London suddenly find themselves owing a lot of money to a dangerous mobster, so they decide to go for a one-time big score by … Continue reading