We have a joke around the Mavis digs (besides myself) that whenever a royalty check from my publisher arrives in the mail, it’s even money at best that the postage paid will be more than the check amount…if a royalty is even generated that particular quarter. Such is the fate of the author of a… Read More ‘Modesty Blaise’ (1966): Modest Bond spoof has high expectations, but lacks game director
I was trying to think of a movie that reminded me of my old man (to celebrate this upcoming Father’s Day), and since I couldn’t find anything titled, Hilariously Funny/Psychopathically Maladapted Depressive with Sadistic Personality Disorder and Suicidal Tendencies, I turned to ‘ol John Wayne. My old man used to laugh at him…but he loved… Read More ‘True Grit’ (1969): John Wayne’s Oscar-winning performance is still fresh, funny & exciting
In an effort this Memorial Day weekend to watch something—anything—other than The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare or Kelly’s Heroes or The Green Berets for the umpteenth time, I rooted around and came up with a real overlooked gem from the late 1960s: the captivating, offbeat big-scale WWII adventure, Hannibal Brooks.
So I spent the equivalent of 20 goddamn hours (it seemed) watching Scorsese’s laughably bad, The Departed, with one of my kids, who then spent another hour or so trying to explain to me why it was so great and why I was so wrong in hating it. He, of course, failed. If I want… Read More ‘Boxcar Bertha’ (1972): Early Scorsese gangster flick isn’t good, but it’s entertaining
Amiable, mindless (…and mostly inexplicable) thick ear for fans of 70s all-star international co-productions.
Nasty, sick-humored film noir classic, from one of the genre’s leading directors.
I can’t stand my dog. It’s a whole story.
Seeing that the latest 4k blu-ray Alfred Hitchcock “ultimate collection” release was not only sold out but a tad pricey for yet another upgrade (I mean honestly…how many times am I going to buy Saboteur?), I decided to rummage around my vast subterranean DVD vault to scrounge up something that was 1) suitably “Hitchcockian,” and… Read More ‘Cold Eyes of Fear’ (1971): Ramped-up Hitchcockian suspenser sports bizarre Morricone score
So, I haven’t thought about Barbra Streisand in something like decades (I honestly thought they had found her dead at the Orange Julius in her Malibu mansion’s subterranean mini-mall). But when I saw she was browbeating asking the Academy to sing about Robert Redford at the Oscars (who didn’t die at a mall but rather… Read More ‘A Star is Born’ (1976): How do you really feel about your fans, Babs?
In my very few moments of sobriety, when the background fuzz partly clears and gives way to bits and pieces of actual audio/visual information that land, one of the constant drones I encounter lately is that I’m no longer living in a democracy (which is curious…since we’ve always been a constitutional republic), but rather a… Read More ‘Hitler’s Madman’ & ‘Hitler’s Children’ (1943): Der Fuhrer doubleheader
Movies & Drinks 