On Moonlight Bay (1951)

The title of the latest movie to come out of the Evil Empire is Disney’s “The Kid”, possibly because the filmmakers were afraid that people might confuse it with the Charlie Chaplin classic of 1921—though more likely because Disney’s appalling hubris just can’t bear not to have its loathsome name on everything it produces. The…

Why is the U.S. Army out to get Wilhelm Furtwängler? Who knows why the U.S. Army does anything in the movies?

The thesis of Elizabeth, written by Michael Hirst and directed by Shekhar Kapur, is very simple— like the people that the thesis is ultimately about. These are the credulous peasants of the middle ages who are supposed to have worshiped the Virgin Mary. By the 16th century, the Catholic Church as headed by Sir John…

Corny and over-the-top as Hollywood’s celebrations of the virtues of rural life as compared to urban used to be, at least the filmmakers usually gave the impression of believing in it.

Krippendorf’s Tribe, directed by Todd Holland, is almost as unfunny a comedy as An Alan Smithee Film. Richard Dreyfuss plays James Krippendorf, a professor of anthropology with three children whose wife has recently died. Prostrated by grief he has shut himself up in the house and lived on his research grant until, one day, a…

A proud vulgarization of Fitzgerald’s novel by Baz Luhrmann