Classic Movie Review Lost in America

Lost in America 

Directed by Albert Brooks 

Written by Albert Brooks

Starring Albert Brooks, Julie Hagerty 

Released March 15th, 1985 

Who hasn't thought of the freedom that would come from dropping out of everyday society. The notion of giving up all the oppressive things in your life and giving yourself over to the open road and the freedom to do literally anything. Fear keeps us from realizing this dream. Fear whispers in your ear and says ``you can't quit your job, what will you do for money?" Fear is quite practical that way. 

But what if you had money? I'm not talking about the dilettantish millions of dollars that would set you up for life but merely just enough money where you know that you can get by for a while. Would you be ready to chuck it all and run off in a Winnebago to paint and write books? That's what Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty's characters in Lost in America had when they decided to chuck it all. What happened next is the end of a rather unusual movie.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.

Movie Review Hustle

Hustle 

Directed by Jeremiah Zagar

Written by Taylor Materne, Will Fetters

Starring Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Anthony Edwards, Robert Duvall

Released June 3rd, 2022

Hustle stars Adam Sandler as Stanley Sugarman, a scout for the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. It’s Stanley’s job to travel around the world and find the next great European player. On a trip to Spain, he finds that player. Bo Cruz, played by NBA star Juancho Hernangomez, is tall and fast and has a terrific jump shot. Spotting Bo playing streetball late one one night, Stanley recognizes his talent even as he was playing basketball in work boots. 

Believing that Bo is the next great player, the one to take the 76ers to the next level, Stanley has to convince the higher ups. This means convincing his long time rival, Vince Merrick (Ben Foster), the talentless son of the late owner (Robert Duvall), to take a chance. When Vince says no and tells Stanley to forget about Bo, Stanley risks his job and financial security to bring Bo to America on his own dime. Putting him up in a hotel, Stanley has to try and get the kid into the NBA draft while keeping Vince in the dark.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Tales of Hoffman

The Tales of Hoffman 

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger 

Written by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Dennis Arundell, Jules Barbier, E.T.A Hoffman

Starring Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann

Released April 4th, 1951 

The Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film, The Tales of Hoffmann, is receiving a brand new Criterion Collection release on Tuesday, June 7th, 2022. Though it is not as well known as Powell and Pressburger’s unparalleled classic, The Red Shoes (1948), The Tales of Hoffmann is quite similar to that 1948 film in terms of style and ambition. Powell and Pressburger’s unprecedented challenge was to bring Opera and Ballet to the big screen in a cinematic package. Their accomplishment of that ambition makes The Tales of Hoffmann historic. 

The Tales of Hoffmann tells three tales, not counting the story being told within the framing device employed by Powell and Pressburger. The framing device has our protagonist, Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville), attending a ballet performance by his beloved Stella (Moira Shearer). During intermission, Hoffman joins his friends and fellow poets in a pub where he is called upon to tell tales. Hoffmann agrees and sets about telling three tales of his failed romances.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story 

Directed by George Cukor

Written by David Ogden Stewart

Starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Ruth Hussey

Released January 27th, 1941

Class warfare comedies, and especially romantic comedies, have a particular tenor and familiar pattern and much of that pattern was navigated first by the legendary director George Cukor whose films such as Born Yesterday and My Fair Lady were all about the clash of cultures as the background to comic romance. Arguably, Cukor’s finest example of the culture clash romance is the 1940 Academy Award nominee The Philadelphia Story starring Katharine Hepburn, Ruth Hussey, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

The Philadelphia Story stars Hepburn as Tracy, ha ha, get it, Tracy, a famous member of a rich Philadelphia clan. Two years earlier she’d called off a big, upper crust marriage to fellow rich family man, C.K Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), in a fashion that was somewhat scandalous. Now, Tracy is set to marry again, this time to a self-made man named George Kitteridge (John Howard) who isn’t all that exciting or glamorous but is stable and well-heeled.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Jaws

Jaws 

Directed by Steven Spielberg 

Written by Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb

Starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw

Release Date June 20th, 1975 

I’ve seen Jaws at least 15 times in my life and it remains consistently entertaining and exciting. Steven Speilberg’s assured direction, Roy Scheider’s steady lead performance, and Robert Shaw’s incredible performance as Quint never fail to sweep me up in the action at Amity Beach. That action is underlined by the remarkable behind the scenes stories that have become legends in their own right and have served to make Jaws so unforgettable.

Jaws stars Roy Scheider as Police Chief Brody. Chief Brody gave up life as a New York City beat cop for the peace and tranquility of a small town beach community. In my own head-canon, Scheider’s tough as nails French Connection detective simply dropped out of society and assumed the identity of Brody to escape Popeye Doyle and his cloud of corruption. That aside, Brody is at peace with the slow pace of life in Amity.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review The Black Phone

The Black Phone

Directed by Scott Derrickson 

Written by Scott Derrickson, C.Robert Cargill

Starring Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies

Release Date June 24th, 2022

The Black Phone is a terrifically terrifying tale. Directed by arguably the best horror movie director working today, Scott Derrickson, The Black Phone delivers both an incredibly rich story and a legitimately scary horror movie. Featuring one of the best performances of Ethan Hawke’s extraordinary career, The Black Phone is far more than a one man show. Scott Derrickson has thought of everything in The Black Phone and takes care to cast the movie perfectly while pacing it to near perfection as well. 

The Black Phone stars Mason Thames as Finney and Madeleine McGraw as Finney’s little sister, Gwen. Together they have navigated losing their mother to mental illness and suicide and their father to his ongoing alcoholism and self loathing. The once loving dad, exceptionally played by Jeremy Davies, has become belligerent and abusive. Brother and sister navigate around his moods amid the outside chaos caused by a recent spate of abductions in their Colorado neighborhood.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Elvis

Elvis 

Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Written by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner

Starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks

Release Date June 24th, 2022

I am a huge fan of director Baz Luhrmann. I find his brand of colorful, whirling, swirling romance to be a heady and exciting mix. Luhrmann is an undeniable artist. That fact makes reviewing his new movie, Elvis, such a chore. I don’t like having to write negatively about a director I admire as much as I admire Baz Luhrmann. But, sadly, Elvis is far too undercooked, far too chaotic, and far too much for me to recommend. 

Elvis is a pseudo-biopic of the legendary King of Rock N’Roll, Elvis Presley, played by newcomer Austin Butler. The actual star of Elvis however, is a fat suit wearing, comically accented Tom Hanks as Elvis’s snaky guru and manager, Col. Tom Parker. The film loosely tells Elvis’s story through the unreliable prism of Parker’s self-aggrandizing narration. This becomes confusing as Parker appears to narrate scenes he wasn’t present for or scenes that are deeply critical of his actions, which muddy his apparent motivation.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie The Blob

The Blob 

Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. 

Written by Theodore Simonson, Kate Phillips

Starring Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Olin Howland 

Released September 12th, 1958 

It’s been more than 60 years since audiences mobbed the theaters to see The Blob starring Steve McQueen and 60 years on, The Blob remains one incredibly fun flick. This naked propaganda piece about the slow spread of the Red Menace remains a glorious piece of nostalgia and a genuinely clever piece of filmmaking that combines the best kind of camp with the best kind of star power.

The Blob stars the legendary Steve McQueen as Steve Andrews, a big man on campus who we meet while he is on a date with his girl, Jane (Aneta Corsaut). The two are at a private spot in the woods under the stars, innocently yet romantically, enjoying a night together when they see something fall from the sky. Steve immediately wants to go find it and the two drive off in search. Meanwhile, a nearby hermit named Barney (Olin Howlin) gets to the thing from the sky first.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Documentary Review Rondo & Bob

Rondo and Bob 

Directed by Joe O'Connell

Written by Documentary 

Starring Robert A. Burns, Rondo Hatten

Release Date November 14th, 2020 

Rondo and Bob is a strange documentary. The film purports to tell the story of Robert (Bob) Burns, the legendary propmaster and set designer for the horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and his obsession with forgotten monster movie star, Rondo Hatton. What we actually get is a confounding series of re-enactments of each man’s life and a few disconnected talking head segments about Burns’ strange life. 

If you are looking for insights into why Bob loved Rondo and how he worked to preserve Rondo's monster movie legend and his unique life, you won’t find that here. What we get instead is a series of facile sketches acted out by amateur actors of suspect acting talent. That, and a bizarre approach to editing that involves slam banging from one story to the next, inelegantly jumping from Burns’ life to Hatton’s life with the care of a sledgehammer through a wall.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 

Directed by Luis Bunuel

Written by Luis Bunuel, Jean-Claude Carriere

Starring Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeuer, Delphine Seyrig

Release Date October 22nd, 1972

Dreams within dreams within dreams, that’s Luis Bunuel’s 1972 feature film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Normally, when a filmmaker uses the trope of ‘it was all a dream’ I get annoyed. But the elegant and deconstuctionist way that Bunuel employs the trope makes it work. The dream within a dream within a dream structure in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie enhances the storytelling while taking the trope and turning it into a charming running gag. 

Ostensibly, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is about a group of six friends trying to get together for a meal. I say they are trying to get together because each time they do, something happens that prevents them from actually sitting down to eat. In the first instance, four members of the group arrive at the home of the other two friends, a couple. They are there for a cocktail party. When they arrive, they are the only guests and the hostess is in her bed-casual clothes. The group came to the party one night early.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Good Luck to You Leo Grande

Good Luck to You Leo Grande 

Directed by Sophie Hyde

Written by Katy Brand

Starring Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormick 

Release Date June 17th, 2022

Good Luck to You Leo Grande is the kind of movie that causes you to evaluate yourself, where you are in life, and how you feel about yourself. It’s also a delightful comedy about an older woman and the sex worker she hires to try and break out of her shell. Myself, I was drawn to the more introspective side of things but if you watch this movie just for the delight of Emma Thompson and her magnetic chemistry with newcomer Daryl McCormack, that works just as well. 

Good Luck to You Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes, a college professor, a mother of two, and a widow. For the first time since her stuffy husband died, Nancy wants to have an adventure, specifically a sexual adventure. Thus why she sought out a service that connects women like her with male escorts willing and able to fulfill fantasies. Nancy chose Leo Grande (McCormack), not his real name, out of a group of potential escorts.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore 

Directed by Martin Scorsese 

Written by Robert Getchell 

Starring Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson

Release Date December 9th, 1974

The central conflict of Martin Scorsese’s 1974 drama, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, is a conflict between illusion and reality. The film is about the fictional life we create for ourselves as a protective case against harsh reality. It’s not just Alice who does this, we all do it to some extent. Life can be hard and re-framing negatives to positives can be helpful even as a self-deception. For Alice, the self-deceptions multiply in order to justify the choices she made in her life. 

Alice’s first illusion comes in the form of the opening scene of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Scorsese decides at this moment to start the film as if it were an MGM musical from the golden age of such musicals. The scene is set on a very obvious Hollywood back-lot. The scene is lit in a rose color, evoking the rose colored glasses through which we often see our past. It’s never stated that this is Alice’s fantasy of what life was like for her as a child in Monterey but it doesn’t need to be spelled out. The style of the scene, the set, the idyll, they all communicate what needs to be communicated as we smash cut to Alice’s real life.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Welcome to the Dollhouse

Welcome to the Dollhouse 

Directed by Todd Solondz

Written by Todd Solondz

Starring Heather Matarazzo, Brendon Sexton III

Released May 24th, 1996

Junior High and High School Suck! That’s the theses of director Todd Solondz via his second feature film effort, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Solondz set out to make a darker version of the kind of High School movie that had been around for years but always felt a little fake or a little too sunny and optimistic. Solondz’s vision of Junior High, via main character Dawn Wiener, played by Heather Mattarazzo, was one in which the dangers of High School could be literal dangers as threats and taunts can turn to actual, potential, violence. 

Welcome to the Dollhouse introduces the unusual character of Dawn Wiener. Dawn is a gawky, gangly, socially awkward 12 year old girl. She’s remarkably resilient and thoughtful despite having spent much of her time at school and at home being either bullied or forgotten. At school she’s called ‘Weiner-Dog’ or some other choice insults too nasty to be printed here. At home, Dawn’s college bound older brother, Mark (Matthew Faber) and her ballerina younger sister, Missy (Daria Kalinina) are both adored by their parents while Dawn is a pariah.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Acid Test

Acid Test 

Directed by Jennifer Waldo

Written by Jennifer Waldo

Starring Juliana Destefano, Brian Thornton, Mia Ruiz

Release Date November 21st, 2021

Acid Test is a coming of age drama set in 1992. It’s about a teenager on the brink of a future that includes Harvard, a good job, and a career. Of course, she begins to question this path and that question provides the plot of the movie. It’s a journey of self discovery that will take the main character, Jenny, played by Juliana Destefano, from straight A student to Riot Grrrl feminist willing to experiment with psychedelics as an escape from her troubles. 

Jenny’s father, Jack (Brian Thornton) has had Jenny on track to go to Harvard for years. Jack himself is a Harvard graduate and that makes Jenny a legacy, and more likely to be able to get into the school on a scholarship. Jenny however, as she’s grown up she’s grown disillusioned about whether Harvard is her dream or her father’s dream. Jenny finds a new path via a trip to a concert where she hears the punk rock of a band of Riot Grrls and has an epiphany about being able to make choices for herself.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Universal Soldier

Universal Soldier 

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Written by Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch, Dean Devlin

Starring Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker

Release Date July 10th, 1992 

Why write about something as silly and seemingly random as Universal Soldier? It goes back to being a teenager who fell in love with the movies while on an adventure with friends. When I was 16 years old on a June day in 1992, myself and three friends decided to see a movie. We intended only to see Batman Returns, the sequel to 1989’s blockbuster Batman starring Michael Keaton. Once we saw that film however, we hatched a sneaky idea.

The theater was extremely busy. Batman Returns was selling tickets fast and the staff was harried and distracted. When we finished Batman we noticed that the baseball movie A League of Their Own starring Tom Hanks was about to start. We decided, we were going to sneak in and see another movie. This sneaky teenage capering (which I am aware is akin to stealing, forgive my aimless, amoral youth) led us to try and make it three movies in a day. We chose the Eddie Murphy comedy Boomerang which had the extra benefit of being R-Rated.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review A Little Princess

A Little Princess 

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Written by Richard Lagravanese, Elizabeth Chandler

Starring Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham, Liesel Matthews

Release Date May 10th, 1995 

A Little Princess was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1905 as an expansion on a series of novellas Burnett had written for St. Nicholas Magazine. The movie industry found A Little Princess for the first time in 1917 as a silent picture starring Mary Pickford in the role of Sara Crewe and Zasu Pitts as her friend Becky. Most notably, the silent A Little Princessfeatured a screenplay by Frances Marion, one of the first women to write for the movies.

Then in 1939 A Little Princess received it’s most iconic film rendering with the legendary Shirley Temple in the role of Sara Crew the daughter of privilege whose life is upended by her father’s tragic death leaving her penniless and at the mercy of the cruel boarding school headmistress, Miss Minchin played by Mary Nash. The 1939 version of A Little Princess was produced in ‘glorious Technicolor’ by master showman Daryl F. Zanuck.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Thor Love and Thunder

Thor Love and Thunder

Directed by Taika Waititi

Written by Taika Waititi

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe

Release Date July 8th, 2022

What is it about the Guardians of the Galaxy that no director other than James Gunn can get the voice of the Guardians right? The Guardians of the Galaxy show up in the opening act of Thor Love and Thunder and they appear, for some inexplicable reason, like off brand versions of the characters we love. I had the same feeling about the Guardians of the Galaxy as they were directed by the Russo Brothers in Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame, the Guardians just never sounded right. 

Why am I opening my review of Thor Love and Thunder by wondering about the off-brand version of the Guardians of the Galaxy? Probably because Thor Love and Thunder didn’t give me anything more memorable than this Guardians tangent. Thor Love and Thunder is deeply mediocre compared to the lively, exciting and well crafted Thor Ragnorak. Thor Love and Thunder fails to figure out how to balance heavy drama involving Christian Bale’s villainous Gorr The God Butcher and Thor’s mostly comic adventure.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Crimes of the Future

Crimes of the Future 

Directed by David Cronenberg 

Written by David Cronenberg

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

Release Date September 8th, 2022 

Crimes of the Future is yet another example of David Cronenberg’s favorite theme, bodily autonomy, the right of people to do what they want with their own bodies. In his 1975 feature, Shivers, Cronenberg examined how outside forces take bodily autonomy away from individuals by force. In Crimes of the Future, the sides are a little more even. In this strange Cronenbergian universe, the war between those who want bodily autonomy and those who want government control over how humanity is evolving has reached a boiling point. 

Caught in the middle of this ideological war is performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his performance partner, a former surgeon named Caprice (Lea Seydoux). Together this duo performs an act in which Saul is operated on by Caprice and has an organ removed. Something the film calls accelerated evolution has led to Saul being able to grow new organs which may or may not have a function. He, and everyone else in this strange future, have also evolved to no longer feel physical pain. Saul and Caprice's art is a live surgery followed by Saul tattooing the new organ and displaying it all for the paying crowd.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez 

Directed by Robert M. Young 

Written by Victor Villasenor, Robert Young

Starring Edward James Olmos, James Gammon

Release Date August 19th, 1983 

The tragic story of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez remains legend in Texas more than 100 years later. A simple error in translation between a sheriff and a man accused of stealing horses led to multiple deaths and the largest manhunt in Texas history at the time. Director Robert M. Young adapted the story of Gregorio Cortes with the help of star Edward James Olmos in a lovely, muted fashion that underlines how remarkable tragedy can arise simply from our inability to communicate effectively.

Gregorio Cortez (Edward James Olmos) was a quiet farmer in Gonzales, Texas until the day a sheriff arrived and accused him of stealing a horse. The events from then on are retold from multiple perspectives with details that change via the man telling the story. The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez unfolds in the familiar style of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and turns importantly on the way perspective and bias can affect the truth.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.