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AFI says it's the number 11 comedy of all time, I can find no reason to disagree.  Mel Brooks first film is a slap stick like Affair with lecherous men, providing sexual gratification to little old ladies in exchange for their investment in Broadway shows. Gene Wilder is a timid  book keeper who figures out a way to make money from a flop. So the search is on for the elements of a guaranteed failure. Everyone remembers how great Zero Mostel and Wilder are in their parts. Special mention must go to Kenneth Mars as the deranged playwright.  His morose Nazi, seeking redemption for der Fueher is comically tragic.  No tragedy, just hilarity when Dick Shawn appears as the actor, supposedly destined for failure,  who steals the play with his loopy line readings. He almost steals the movie as well. Springtime for Hitler was a show stopper in the film, and I'm sure the number had a huge impact on the decision to turn the film into a Broadway musical. The film made from t...

I thought the recording app had only recorded one end of the conversation. Fortunately, when the data got in the right hands, it turned out to be fine. Hope you enjoy the show.

This will be a relatively short post because there is on;y a little bit to say about this film. I had seen the trailer and thought that it was a raunchy comedy that I could safely skip. My wife had expressed a little interest but the butt chugging gag in the trailer was not promising. I'm going to blame the guys on one of the podcasts that I listen to for talking me into seeing this. They discussed it on one of their recent shows, and both of them thought it had some funny lines of dialogue. They were not impressed with the physical gags but thought there was a theme here worth looking at. Since I have been blocked myself [from seeing several other films until a certain member of the household was available] , it seemed right to give it a chance. Indeed the film is raunchy. The parents act in some pretty stupid ways in their attempt to track down and stop their girls from making what they see as a mistake. There are three or four completely superfluous scenes that exist only for th...

This is a thriller in the broadest sense of the word. It has many of the tropes of an urban thriller; a lone hero, a deep conspiracy of the powerful, an innocent who needs to be saved, and a variety of criminal elements. If you were to group this in with an action film or another Liam Neeson film, you would be so off the mark as to be at risk of hitting your own innocent bystander. One of the reviews quoted in the trailer refers to "Taxi Driver" as its' counter-part. That is about as close as it gets to any other movie you may have see. The Scorsese film from the seventies has some of the same points, and another isolated hero. Unlike Travis Bickel, "Joe"  lives in a more average surrounding, but his psychosis is probably deeper, darker and more paranoid than anything you have encountered before.  Director/Screenwriter Lynne Ramsay, has visualized the story as a series of images and nightmares. The narrative is mixed with the nightmares and the result is somethi...

Another appearance on the podcast, a great franchise and a lot of fun.

Over the weekend, I saw two films. One made me clench my arms and legs, bite my lip and hold onto my seat. The second made me sick to my stomach. This is a paraphrase of what my daughter said after seeing Chappaquiddick. This straightforward retelling of the tragedy from 1969, should enrage, depress and gut punch you in a way that is a lot less enjoyable than a horror film. This episode from the life of a lionized political figure should cause some serious reassessment of his place in the pantheon of Kennedy family heroes. Ted Kennedy may have grown from this time to represent something more in political fields, but the social reputation he had towards the end of his life  suggests that he had the same aura of entitlement that lead to the disgraceful events depicted in this movie. The film does not really depict anything that was not known about the events leading up to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. There was a party, he drove her to meet the ferry, he was flustered on the road an...

Here is a film that has no more than a half dozen characters. There are maybe twelve lines of dialogue in the film. For the first third of the movie there really is no score. And the film manages to build suspense, create character and provide enough exposition for us to understand what is going on. That my friends is a well written story. There may be a couple of plot holes or inconsistencies but once the idea has grabbed a hold of you, it does not let go until the end. Maybe you can worry about minor quibbles after you catch your breath and relax your body and grip on the armrest. Director and co-screenwriter John Krasinski has made a modern horror classic. It is limited on gore but rich in suspense and ideas. The premise of the film is set up very nicely in the introduction of the film. There is a screen shot that mentions a day count, but that is all. Everything else is laid out for us in silence. The children are kids, but one of them is sick. The older sister is enjoying shopping...