Film Forum and Reviews

Films were my baby sitter as a child, John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson kept me occupied and the town safe in Rio Bravo, my early teen aged dating was done at drive-ins to the tune of such epics as "Splendor in the Grass" [I never did see all of it]. Sean Connery defined my mid to late teens beginning with Dr. No, then sealed the deal with Thunderball; I became a SCUBA diver soon after.

2001 A Space Odyssey changed everything. Not only did it redefine what COULD be done realistically, the days of the cheesy stop-action T-Rex stomping cardboard cities were over. It also revealed that of all the ingredients that go into the making of a film, none not the actors, not the script [my field] nor the stars matters as much as the director, a good one can elevate even a mediocre performer to greatness, a great one can produce awe-inspiring results as in any Hitchcock film or any Bogart/Huston collaboration. A bad one...well, there are some obvious choices....

I no longer watch movies, I absorb them, study them, analyze them; am often disappointed, and sometimes enormously surprised as with "The Lucky Number Slevin", which, I thought , would be stupid and a waste of the $2 I spent for it [come on Josh Hartnell AND Lucy Lieu?], but it delighted and surprised and satisfied the ancient beast in all of us who believe that "revenge is a dish best eaten cold", arguably the greatest line in any Sci-fi flick [Ricardo Montalbán, Khan Noonien Singh, in Star Trek, the Wrath of Khan, arguably the best Star Trek, including 2009.]

What should have been bad movies can often surprise and delight; based on the script "Miss Congeniality" should have been a walk out, but I still laugh and cry at the same places. Some epic, star studded films are a grotesque abuse as with any of the Ocean's films, where multi-millionaire actors snail mail their performance, while a low budget, relatively no name farce with a mediocre script like "My Cousin Viny" can still amuse, entertain and titillate [Marissa Tomei in that blue dress!] while reaping an unexpected academy award.

My friends say I have a good face for radio and a great eye for film. But then they're seriously deranged fools. But they do have a point: we live in a world where the cultural denominator is some genre called "Scripted reality television" [for the record I do not own a televisions and, yes, I am a snob about it] so isn't about time we raised the bar?

So, in the end, I thought I'd try my hand at some film reviews - see "Law Abiding Citizen" under film reviews, and one or two others planned in the coming days.