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Muscle Shoals (2013)
The documentary Muscle Shoals chronicles the oddity of Muscle Shoals, Ala., a tiny town near the Tennessee River that became an improbable birthplace for some of the most soulful music of the 20th century. At the center of the Muscle Shoals miracle is Rick Hall, a stone-faced guy with a hardscrabble past, who in the…
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Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.” –Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City. Alfred Hitchcock said he preferred making movies adapted from marginal novels instead of top-shelf literature. The latter, he reasoned, already had been defined in an artistic medium that…
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The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
If this rags-to-riches tale wasn’t true, you’d think it was the invention of the world’s sappiest motivational speaker. Chris Gardner, penniless and homeless in the early 1980s, remained committed to caring for his young son while working toward a career as a stockbroker. It’s stuff tailor-made for an inspirational Hollywood flick, and it is a…
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Diary of the Dead (2007)
As the granddaddy of the modern-day zombie flick, George A. Romero understood that the undead are much more than simply people who have a good reason for smelling bad. He recognized that zombies make for potent metaphors with (considering the constraints of rigor mortis) surprising malleability. One minute, they’re fearsome monsters with an insatiable need…
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Serpico (1973)
Serpico is gritty. It’s rough around the edges. It’s mired in an on-the-mean-streets-of-New York-in the-1970s vibe. In short, it’s a Sidney Lumet movie. Al Pacino delivers an indelible, iconic performances as Frank Serpico, the real-life undercover cop who blew the whistle on widespread New York City police corruption in the early ‘70s. The movie begins with…
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The Hangover (2009)
The no-holds-barred bachelor’s party ranks as one of life’s great paradoxes. OK, maybe not one of the great paradoxes, but certainly in the top 100 or so. As anyone who has ever engaged in such depravity can attest (or so I’m told), this particular rite of passage turns on the conceit that its most memorable…
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Elegy (2008)
Adaptations of Philip Roth novels don’t generally fare well on the big screen (Goodbye Columbus, anyone?), but Elegy is the rare beast that gets it just about right. Based on Roth’s The Dying Animal, about an aging college professor grappling with inner demons and an obsession with a younger woman, Elegy avoids the pitfalls typically…
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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Extolling the greatness of Bonnie and Clyde is a little like remarking on how wet rain is. Oceans of ink have been spilled on the significance of this masterpiece nominally about the real-life, Depression-era bank robbers, among the more recent treatises being Mark Harris‘ excellent Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of…
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach
Let’s talk about movies.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 