Thursday (December 2), the National Board of Review announces their Top 10 list and awards, kicking off the awards season in earnest. Obviously, I’ll be posting a lot about what’s winning, what’s getting nominated, and what the Oscar contenders might end up being. But I’m going to try and keep things a little more orderly…
Month: November 2021
Sprecher Diamond Blackberry Review
It’s the first night of Hanukkah, and a good night to continue my latest set of soda reviews. This soda is one I’m especially glad to try, because in a sense I’ve waited over two years to do so. Back in the fall of 2018, I discovered Sprecher’s Diamond line, a quartet of sodas which…
The Weekly Gravy #65
The Palm Beach Story (1942) – ***½ I’m not alone in rating The Palm Beach Story a couple of notches below the best of Preston Sturges’ early 40s output. It doesn’t have the same perfect balance of heart and humor; the story, especially the silly, abrupt resolution, feels like a shaggy-dog story, an excuse for…
The All-Time Gravy Film Awards (2021)
When I put together the first edition of these awards, I expected to make them a yearly thing. I didn’t do the second edition last year, however – I don’t remember why, exactly – which gave me an additional year to watch and rewatch films for this project. The rewatches in particular have helped, two…
KING RICHARD Review – ***½
King Richard is a rather strange film, starting from the choice to tell the story of the Williams’ sisters early careers from the POV of their fiercely determined father Richard (Will Smith), the kind of man to draw up a lengthy plan (78 pages, we’re told) of how to get them to tennis stardom before…
The Weekly Gravy #64
Greed (1924) – ***½ I really think a good portion of Greed’s reputation as an all-time classic stems from the legendary original cut – which ran somewhere between eight and nine hours in length – which was shorn, first to four hours by the director, then to under two and a half by the studio….
The Weekly Gravy #63
Thief (1981) – ***½ Underneath the slick cinematography and the amazing score by Tangerine Dream, Thief is a study of the contrast between hard-boiled professionalism and emotional naïveté. Frank (James Caan) is a brilliant safecracker, one who knows all the precautions to take, all the research to do, and all the people to do what…
THE COOL MIKADO Review – *½
Once upon a time Gilbert & Sullivan wrote the famous comic opera – The Mikado. Any resemblance between their creation and this film is completely accidental. So we’re warned at the start of The Cool Mikado, and you’d do well to heed it. You’d also do well not to bother with this movie, but it’s…
Awards Season 2021-22: British Independent Film Awards Nominations (UPDATED with Winners)
This is an interesting year for the BIFAs. I’ve only seen one of the major contenders so far…but I saw it last year, and it came close to earning several nods from me then. Also, there are a few glaring omissions, and I’m really not sure whether to chalk them up to a desire to…
ETERNALS Review – **½
That Eternals begins with an expository text crawl, laying out who the Celestials, their servants the Eternals, and their nemeses the Deviants are, should give you cause for concern. When was the last time a non-Star Wars film used one of those? Hell, when was the last time a Star Wars film needed one of…
If You Want the Gravy... 