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
Ronald Searle (1920-2011) was a brilliant British artist in pen and ink. Even as a captive of the Japanese during World War II, when he was forced into slave labor and became seriously ill, he managed to obtain paper and … Continue reading
A computer animated film about a prehistoric family forced to look for a new home when their cave is destroyed doesn’t sound too promising, so had my friend Jerry Lapidus not recommended it, I would have missed this, and I’ve … Continue reading
Update: At least two new Jesse Stone movies are in the works according to industry reports. See for example this article from Variety. Production begins in May, with scripts to be co-written by Michael Brandman and Tom Selleck, and the … Continue reading
As I indicated in the set of reviews I posted back in May, I greatly enjoyed the Jesse Stone movies starring Tom Selleck that were broadcast on CBS in 2005-2012. I’ve now finished reading the original novels by Robert B. … Continue reading
Brandon Fraser plays a geologist whose long-vanished brother was convinced that Verne’s novel about a descent down an Icelandic volcano had a factual basis. When the brother’s son comes to spend a few days with him, they discover a reason … Continue reading
The previous film with Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson was better than I’d expected. Turning Holmes into an action hero was obviously a bit of a stretch, but almost everything in the film had some … Continue reading
This is one in a long series of adaptations of the popular children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (but the only one I’ve actually seen). The heroine (Kate Maberly) is an orphaned girl whose rich parents died in a fire … Continue reading