If we are to believe what the small town melodramas tell us, then every village and burg dotting the map is filled with deviants, hypocrites and mothers pretending to be their child’s aunt to hide the “shame of illegitimacy.” To mix a metaphor, these stories are all about ripping the lid off small town America...
Whenever a movie star dies, it is both expected and natural to use the occasion to reflect on the times that that actor helped to define. After all, we have a natural human need to look back, and the nostalgic pull of movie stars – particularly the passing of one – offers us a doorway...
It’s Always Fair Weather, Directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen By Ron Falzone Why is It’s Always Fair Weather, available on Amazon, always left in the backwater when talking about the great MGM musicals? The failure of It’s Always Fair Weather at the box office signaled the beginning of the end of the glorious Arthur Freed unit...
In all my years reporting on cinema, I have never seen 8.5 minutes of footage that has sparked a global call to action, as we’ve witnessed with the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Read Full Review
What to watch in a pandemic is new territory for a film critic. Nothing as WBGO film critic I’m expected to deal with not now. Or Ever. But here we all are. I started with the conventional wisdom from the first time the world crashed in the age of movies, the Great Depression of the...
Our film critic Harlan Jacobson got the Blues this Christmas by dropping in on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the new film based on an August Wilson play from 1984. The film is produced by Netflix, which is in the holiday audience and Oscar hunt. HJ: Just the sound of the title, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, as it rolls...
In HG Wells’ original 1897 novel, The Invisible Man, the central character, Griffin, is a medical student turned optical scientist who’s successfully unlocked the key to how we see—and turned himself invisible. Irreversibly. When he arrives at a country inn wrapped in bandages, wearing a country hat and a fake pink nose, and toting a complete...
Hillbilly Elegy came a callin’ on Netflix in time for Thanksgiving to remind us about how complicated the notion of family really is. Our film critic, Harlan Jacobson, takes us to Kentucky for more. HJ: JD Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy memoir arrived in 2016 as part of a flotilla of non-fiction books, including Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With...
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