weekend watchlist: is it good to be the queen?
Plus a teenage con artist, a skewering of late-night comedy, and more… (First published September 18th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Tony Blair
wtf: did Tony Blair plagiarize ‘The Queen’?
Screenwriter Peter Morgan throws a rotten tomato at the former British prime minister…
Dear John (review)
Oh, it’s tragic, all right, what happens when lovers get separated by a war whipped up out of political bullshit.
October 9: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings
We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but the idea of just lying on a tropical beach — even if you have to pretend the sofa is made of sand — sounds so much more appealing. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection … more…
my week at the movies: ‘Shrink,’ ‘In the Loop’
Slow screening week, as holiday weeks tend to be… Kevin Spacey is a Hollywood psychiatrist in Shrink (opens in the U.S. on July 24; no U.K. release date has been announced yet). I hope he goes all American Beauty on the asses of all his celebrity clients and tells them to shove their problems while … more…
Frost/Nixon movie review: all the president’s mien
This was the sort of hopeless dread the news that Ron Howard was directing this left me with. I felt like Robert Stack in *Airplane!*: ‘It’s a goddamn waste of time — there’s no way he can land this plane!’
5 reasons I’m psyched for ‘W.’
All this week! 5 movies I’m psyched for in October, and 5 reasons why. No. 5: W. [opens limited October 17]. 1. Oliver Stone can be a nut — see JFK — but he’s a highly entertaining nut: JFK may be a complete fantasy (I’m not saying it is for sure, just that it may … more…
The Deal (review)
They’re trying to sell this 2003 movie as ‘the prequel to *The Queen.*’ It’s right there on the DVD box. Don’t be fooled by it.
counting down the best films of 2006: No. 6, ‘The Queen’
WHY IS THIS ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR?: Helen Mirren turns in one of the greatest performances in cinematic history as the reigning queen of England, Elizabeth II, taking a woman who not only doesn’t come across as warm and sympathetic, she doesn’t even seem human … and Mirren humanizes her, makes … more…
V for Vendetta movie review: trickster in a garden of evil
I still can’t get my head around how profoundly awed and moved and overwhelmed and terrorized and rejuvenated I am by this movie.
