Mars Express (2023) – ***½ I suppose if I watched more anime, I’d be more likely to find this film old hat; hell, having seen Blade Runner and 2049, which this strongly echoes (it also echoes Her to a lesser degree), I should be saying “I’ve seen this all before.” And yet here I am,…
ID4 and NO RETURN: The Monthly Gravette #25
After spending several months working my way through The Tale of Genji, I turned my attention to some breezier reads – at least for a couple of books. I began with Independence Day, Stephen Molstad’s novelization of the 1996 alien-invasion epic I’ve seen umpteen times; it was one of the books I rescued from my…
HAWAII (1966) Review – ***
What makes an epic? Is it length? On that count, Hawaii would qualify; the full roadshow version (which I watched on VHS – it’s not readily available) runs 189 minutes with overture, intermission, and exit music, and even the readily available version runs 160. Is it subject? Well, it deals with the colonization and Christianization…
The Weekly Gravy #188
The Burning Hell (1974) – Dreck I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell. – Isaac Asimov I doubt Asimov ever saw the films…
The Weekly Gravy #187
The Letter (1940) – **** There’s no question in The Letter of who done it – from the very beginning we know that Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) shot Geoffrey Hammond. And while it’s a little before we learn exactly why, it’s pretty clear that her claims of shooting him in self-defense are a lie; if…
The NBR Project: 10 Years On
Back in the spring of 2014, I began what I called The NBR Project, with the aim, more or less, of reviewing those films cited by the National Board of Review for their annual Top 10 lists. Since then, while I’ve seen plenty of films which made their lists – and have since all but…
The Weekly Gravy #186
Catch My Soul/Santa Fe Satan (1974) – **½ Othello is one of Shakespeare’s thorniest tragedies, with an interracial marriage at its core which deteriorates under the villain’s influence into violence and finally murder, and with a title role all too often played by white actors in blackface – including at least one production of this…
O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA Review – ****
Hearing about the death of O.J. Simpson, I decided to go ahead and publish a fuller review of the brilliant documentary that sums up his life, his career, and the social context in which his trial occurred, leaving little room in my mind that he was, indeed, guilty. This was what I wrote in a…
Jones Hatch Chile & Lime Review
I was taking a walk in between my double feature of Monkey Man and Femme and wandered into HyVee, where I saw individual bottles of Jones for sale alongside the multi-packs. One caught my eye: a “Special Release” in a flavor I’d never tried. Given the reasonable sugar content (25 grams) and the 3-cent-a-gallon fuel…
The Weekly Gravy #185
Braveheart (1995) – *** Braveheart is one of the most curious and contested Picture winners I can think of. It inspires passionate support from some and denunciations from others (Erik Beck shreds it here, my cousin here), but all of that is in hindsight. In 1995, it entered the race with good but not brilliant…
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