Movie Nation

Perhaps “The Green Hornet” is director Michel Gondry’s mocking wink at masked heroes-obsessed Hollywood and the fanboys who made it that way.

Continue reading →

There are these guys, see? And they’re dressed in slightly out-of-date suits, gray mostly. And they wear hats –each and every one of them, all the time.

They dress like “Mad Men” and they’re led by a “Mad Men” star (John Slattery). But they’re not in advertising, circa 1962. No, these guys run a vast bureaucracy that clocks in every morning and decides our fate.

Continue reading →

The adorably hand-animated “My Dog Tulip” is based on a fictionalized memoir by the English writer J. R. Ackerley.

The film features Christopher Plummer plummily narrating the story of how Ackerley, seeking that one perfect “friend,” sort of settled on a lively, sociable but utterly untrained Alsatian (German shepherd) named “Tulip.” He fell for this dog and her kind, marveling that any creature could “find the world so wonderful.” She “came into my life and transformed it.”

Continue reading →

What, exactly, was “Made in Dagenham,” the gigantic Ford factory in the UK, back in 1968?

Nothing less than equal rights for women, Nigel Cole’s “Norma Rae from the UK” suggests. It’s a cheeky and uplifting “inspired-by-a-true-story” tale that overcomes its predictability with sparkling performances, a dash of wit and a lot of heart.

Continue reading →

The sometimes exuberant James Franco makes for an oddly muted Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in “Howl,” an all-star cast bio-pic about Ginsberg’s most famous poem and the 1957 obscenity trial it provoked.

Documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman attracted Hollywood talent, far and wide, for this film, had an epic poem and a classic culture clash as their subject and still produced a corpse from it.

Continue reading →

His posture, ramrod straight. His manners, impeccable. His breeding and entitlement obvious even if you don’t know his real name is Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George.

But the client who has been signed up for speech therapy by his gently insistent wife is only Mr. Johnson to the down-on-his-heels actor-counselor and therapist.  And Mr. Johnson’s problem is as obvious as his awkwardness in simple conversation.

“I buh-bloody well stutter!”

And as “Bertie,” begins his therapy, there’s a need for him to get over this.  Bertie is The Duke of York, younger brother to the Prince of Wales, and he has speaking engagements. But when his shallow, playboy brother abdicates, Bertie’s speaking calender will only fill up as he becomes king. When Britain is plunged into World War II, a speech by the king to rally the nation is a big deal. Every ear in the empire will hang on every word of “The King’s Speech.”

One of the best films of 2010 captures the funny, touching and inspiring relationship between the man who will become King George VI (Colin Firth) and the brash Aussie (Geoffrey Rush) who tries to figure out why he stutters, and to help him over it so that the free world won’t despair every time the stammering, stuttering George opens his mouth.

Continue reading →

You’d better watch out.

You’d better not swear.

Have a gun handy, loaded for bear.

Santa Claus is coming…to Finland.

Continue reading →