In the Year of the Pig (1969) ***

No matter how hard you might try to avoid inserting bias into a documentary you almost always fail.  However, that does not disqualify your overarching aim. Such is the case with director Emile de Antonio’s Vietnam War documentary, In the Year of the Pig (1969). When it was initially released in 1968 the war had started to become increasingly unpopular in the United States, and the film only added to the growing anti-war sentiment. What I find...

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Tokyo Story (1953) **1/2

  How can a film be so simplistic but also so elegant?  This is the question you ask yourself after watching director Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953). Everything about this nuanced Japanese film seems so natural: the acting, the cinematography, and the story.  For Ozu there is no climatic conclusion—only a slight transition to the next stage, whatever that may be (the audience is left to decide). Whenever I watch Ozu’s work I feel...

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Pinocchio (1940) **

When your favorite character in a film doesn’t have one line then you know you just weren’t that enthralled.  Such was the case with Walt Disney Pinocchio (1940), where I much preferred Figaro the cat to every other animated being in it.  Plus, the story, by today’s standards, is just too pedophilic for me: single, old man builds a boy puppet and wishes that it were a real boy and then a fairy grants his wish.  I’ve obviously been...

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Fantasia: Not Your Child’s Disney (1940) **1/2

Mushrooms, fairy dust, nudity, intoxication, murder, witchcraft, and satanism are not words that pop to mind when someone mentions Walt Disney.  Yet, all of these elements appear in Disney’s Fantasia (1940). Ah, but there’s more—it’s an experimental, stereophonic movie, too.  I can’t imagine that many children (then and now) are pleased to learn that Mickey Mouse is only in the film for a few minutes and then the rest is music, music,...

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The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) **

Prior to 1938 Warner Brothers Studios didn’t make big-budget films. They were known for their low-budget gangster films and weepies.  All of this changed when they gave The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) a $2 million budget and made the big leap to Technicolor.  Luckily, they made $4 million at the box office; unfortunately, I found their use of Technicolor to be an assault on good taste. Carl Jules Weyl won an Academy Award for Best...

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Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion) 1937 ***

Director Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion (1937) has the distinct honor of being the first foreign-language film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.  What sets it apart from other war movies about WWI is that there is not a battle to be seen. Instead, it examines the social-psychological world of POW camps—where battlefield enemies become friends, and religion and class take a backseat to survival.  In an outside world composed of chaos and...

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Cabaret (1972) **

As a child I was mesmerized by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939).  Perhaps it was Dorothy’s childlike innocence and sweet voice that made me love that film so much.  The same cannot be said for Garland’s daughter Liza Minnelli’s Oscar-winning effort in Cabaret (1972), in which she plays a character who definitely doesn’t sing sweetly and is far from innocent.  Just let me say it: I have never enjoyed watching director’s Bob...

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