Like David Mamet, Aaron Sorkin is less a screenwriter than a songwriter. Sure, Goo goo j’goob doesn’t make a lick of sense, but its got a great beat. So, too, does The Trial of the Chicago 7, Netflix’s latest pandemic entrée. Granted, our time in isolation has made us more welcoming than ever to visitors. And Sorkin, the …
If you happen to be reading this, do yourself a favor: Stop reading this. Instead, go to Netflix and cue up The Speed Cubers, the streaming service’s new documentary. Don’t read plot synopses, recaps, analyses or first reactions. It’s only 40 minutes long, so carve out the same attentive time you would for your favorite TV …
“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 …
(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 …
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 …
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 …
Admit it. You haven’t been doing the reading you should during The Great Thinning. Come oooooonnnn: You know the most serious consideration you’ve given to a book lately is whether it’s worth more as text or toilet paper. Don’t feel guilty. We’ve been weaning off books since TV was invented in 1927. And the pandemic …
If Hollywood were still around, stuntmen would be the talk of it. In March, Brad Pitt won an Oscar playing an aging stunt double in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. His real-life stunt double, David Leitch, went from the landing mat to the director’s chair to direct Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde. Keanu Reeve’s stunt …
Here, in the stark luminescence of a worldwide pandemic, we can be honest with each other, human to human. And here’s the truth: Cat people are weird. You know it. I know it. And Netflix sure as hell knows it: Over winter, the streamer had the documentary of the season with Don’t F*** with Cats, a …
Netflix is a data-driven dance floor, an algorithmic treehouse . The company monitors the viewing habits of its 158 million subscribers so closely that it not only knows what you watch, but when you watch it, how much of it you watch, the trends that are most likely to hook you — even the thumbnail …
The Hollywood Bowles 