In the Heat of the Night (review)

Maybe it’s an indication of some slight social progress, or just a marker of how fine a film this is, that In the Heat of the Night also works as a crime-fighting story in a tradition as old as the Sherlock Holmes tales and as new as The X-Files.

The Sound of Music (review)

How can you tell The Sound of Music is a fantasy? Forget that it’s based on a true story. The fantasy tip-off is this: Julie Andrews plays a nun. The radiant and sweetly sexy Andrews, not that she isn’t delightful in the role, is about as believable as a nun as, say, Mel Gibson would be as the Pope.

My Fair Lady (review)

My Fair Lady — another musical from Gigi creators Lerner and Loewe — is a charming and amusing satire on the absurdity of rigid class distinctions such as were to be found in turn-of-the-century London.

Tom Jones (review)

Tom Jones is one of those movies I appreciate more than I enjoy. Though based on Henry Fielding’s classic 18th-century novel, it seems at times little more than an excuse to revel in the licentiousness of the burgeoning free-love atmosphere of the 1960s.

West Side Story (review)

West Side Story is a brilliant updating of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the two warring families of Verona now two streets gangs of kids from two different immigrant cultures coexisting in one New York City neighborhood.

The Apartment (review)

Only a man could have written this movie (it was Billy Wilder, and he directed, too). And only men could have written all the glowing reviews of The Apartment that I’ve found both online and off. The Apartment is a perfect demonstration of why ‘nice guys’ get a bad rap from women, but that seems to go right over the head of all those men praising it.

Ben-Hur (review)

Make no mistake — Ben-Hur is not great art. But it is great fun. Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), a contemporary of Jesus, is a Jewish prince in Roman-ruled Judea newly reunited with his boyhood friend Messala (Stephen Boyd). Messala, a Roman, has just returned from the empire’s capital to reign as tribune, a sort of lieutenant governor, of Judea. These old pals now find themselves separated by politics — one is the ruler, the other the ruled.

Gigi (review)

Gigi was kinda the Pretty Woman of the 50s. I hate to say that, because I hate that stupid movie (a fairy tale about a hooker!), and Gigi is simply a charming delight. But this Lerner and Loewe musical does bear the tiniest superficial resemblance to that other flick, though it ends up offering a much more positive moral.