Jerry Seinfeld’s otherwise genius combination of childhood nostalgia and comedy is marred by a lack of political temperance that deflates the experience for at least half the audience.
Tag: Film review
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Recognizing the Enemy Within
John Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate” illuminates timeless and timely truths about the relationship between freedom and authoritarianism, as well as the that between illusion and reality. It’s a perfect film for our times.
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‘Risky Business’ As Conservative Morality Tale?
“Risky Business” wasn’t supposed to be a sly indictment of capitalism. A coming re-release from the Criterion Collection restores the director’s original intention as a warning about crazy women and the power of sex to destroy men.
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Dakota Johnson’s Honesty and Madame Web’s Failure
The actress’s frankness about her regrets over participating in this turkey of a film is a breath of fresh air. It’s a cause to be hopeful that studios will learn that there are penalties for choosing to relegate art to the algorithms.
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Raëlian Melodrama Courtesy of Netflix
The Netflix formula for documentaries produces an alien-infused melodrama that falls flat and reveals little about its bizarre subject.
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The Gorgeous New Movie ‘Cabrini’ Will Break Your Heart
To watch the film is to look at what once existed through eyes jaundiced by the bitter tears shed in noting what we face in our country and in the Church of today.
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‘The Beekeeper’ Is the Hunter Biden Movie In Disguise
The Beekeeper doesn't deliver the red pill whole, but it's the closest thing we're likely to see on film about the corruption possible in the age of the deep state.
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Blazing Brooks
Fifty years ago, a cry went out for a man with laughs. Mel Brooks answered the call.
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Gratuitous Grotesqueness in ‘Poor Things’
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things is now celebrated in Hollywood but, in truth, it is just another feminist revenge story to which creativity comes to die.
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At the Intersection of Love and Technology
No matter the advances in technology, filmgoers still long for the magic evoked by the plot device of an implausible lost love reunion depending more on fate than human initiative.
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Scenes from a Marriage
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro offers an artful examination of questions and contradictions posed by a marriage that was full of them.
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Looking for Cary Grant
A new series about the quintessential Hollywood heartthrob reveals the dangers we encounter when we hide our true identities so well, they become forgotten—even to us.
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The Creation of an American Everyman
Frank Capra’s film, Meet John Doe, makes clear—especially as Christmas Day approaches—that man is not the measure of all things. It is only when God’s wisdom is the foundation of man’s being and existence that we can live authentically in both words and deeds.
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The Good, the Bad, and the Grateful in ‘The Wizard of Oz’
This Thanksgiving we’d do well to revisit this American classic. “Don’t lose your goodness!” this film firmly instructs us.
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Human Weakness in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
There is a clear message in this film: Weakness is evil. But the cacophony of voices and perspectives from which Scorsese draws, demonstrates an ironic weakness in his making of this film.
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Bird Naming, Nature Taming, and Reality
As Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) demonstrates, the exhilaration and beauty of nature can quickly turn to horror. Nature doesn’t care what we call it.
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The Unnerving but Unsurprising Elements of Our Current ‘Police State’
Though we are rightly horrified by what our government has become, we ought not be surprised. Delegitimization and suppression of opposition has been the avowed goal of the American left for more than a century.
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‘The Whole Town’s Talking’ and Edward G. Robinson’s Case of Mistaken Identity
There isn’t one wasted moment in this tightly directed and acted 1935 John Ford screwball comedy featuring Edward G. Robinson and Jean Arthur.
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The Ghost of Sherlock Holmes
In Sidney Lanfield’s 1939 production of The Hound of Baskervilles, we have a perfect ghostly reflection for spooky October viewing.
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The Faustian Bargain of Dorian Gray
Albert Lewin’s 1945 film, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is the perfect selection for this season of reflection about our mortality and the virtues we need to cultivate to make life worth living.
