The Hollywood Bowles

Those who can't write, edit. Those who can't edit, blog.

There Will Be Blood is ostensibly about real-life California oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, and even includes the now-famous “I drink your milkshake!” quote, attributed to Doheny during Congressional investigations of the industry. But on Deja-View, it sure seems like Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson is actually paying homage to Stanley Kubrick, particularly 2001: A Space Odyssey. And if …

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The consensus is pretty clear: Tenet is a solid film. The latest Christopher Nolan opus is a time-leaping thriller with a plot as convoluted as Inception and a look that’s just as polished. The movie earned a thumbs-up from three-quarters of the nation’s critics and earned positive reviews from 77% of America’s moviegoers, according to RottenTomatoes.com It also cost …

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“Mistah Kurtz — he dead!” — Heart of Darkness, 1899, Joseph Conrad The 1970’s will forever be inscribed in Hollywood’s epochal calendar as the era of the ingenue: Directors like Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese would find their early wheelhouses there with films that would permanently alter our definition of a movie hero. But after a …

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Right out of the gate, Her was hailed as a masterwork. It earned a thumbs-up from an astounding 95% of the nation’s critics. Writer-director Spike Jonze won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Combined, Her would win 82 various film circle awards and be nominated for 184. Yet the movie never resonated with the American public. Costing $23 million, the …

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(Part of an occasional series.) The Black Stallion is bookend-ed with two of Hollywood’s favorite tropes: the shipwreck and the horse race. What happens in between, however, is anything but cliched. The 1979 film, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, is nothing short of magic, a profound adaptation of a children’s story that became arguably one of …

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And The Oscar Should Go To… The Academy Award for best documentary, feature and short, often goes to the non-fiction movie that not only takes a revealing snapshot of the nation or world, but also changes the way we look at it. Think Bowling for Columbine, the 2002 movie by Michael Moore and Michael Donovan …

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It’s hard to say specifically which day the movies died. It’s not like music, which could say Feb. 3, 1959 — the day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.  We don’t have a dramatic departure for the movie hero, no ride …

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